Have you heard about the “climate-friendly food labeling system”?

Have you heard about the “climate-friendly food labeling system”? As I mentioned last post in my blog, over the winter vacation I studied the Swedish case for cutting global warming or greenhouse effects by developing the climate-friendly food labeling system. According to the Swedish government, this system, known as the “climate labeling for food project,” is intended to “reduce the negative climate effects in food production and give consumers a chance to make conscious climate choices as well as strengthening the competitiveness of the food producers.” Starting with a preliminary project in 2007, some Swedish governnent agencies, KRAV and Swedish Seal, attempted to create a guideline or standard regarding climate labeling with the support of several policy actors including food chains, interest groups, and academics. One interesting thing regarding this labeling is that it shows how much carbon dioxide is emitted during the whole life cycle of a certain food, from production through cultivation, transportation, to serving the customers; for exmaple, “Climate declared: .87 kg CO2 per kg of product.” According to the New York Times, if the new food guidelines were religiously heeded, Sweden could cut its emissions from food production by 20% to 50%.

I would like to see real climate-friendly food labeling used in Sweden, but it is hard to find it because the implementation of this labeling system is in the early age. Fortunately, I found some examples in Blomqvist’s master’s thesis, Different Types of Climate Labels for Food Products, published in 2009. Here are some climate-friendly food labels in Sweden.







If you are interested in the Swedish climate-friendly food labeling system, please see these web pages.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/23/world/europe/23degrees.html?_r=1&ref=dining
http://www.peachygreen.com/going-green/swedish-food-labels
http://www.krav.se/Klimat-08/Klimatprojektet/In-English/
http://www.klimatmarkningen.se/in-english/

Hi, guys!

Hello, guys. I am Dongjae Jung, a second-year Ph.D student in the School of Public Affairs.
Nice to meet you guys in this class.

I came from South Korea almost four and half years ago and have been living in Tempe, Arizona since August of 2005. Before participating in the School of Public Affairs, I worked in the public sector for almost five years in the Korean National government and the Korean National Assembly as a research fellow and a policy aide.

My academic interest has been changing over the course of my graduate studies at ASU. My first academic love at the undergraduate level was organization theory and behaviors, but studying public policy, and especially focusing on policy process (policy evaluation and implementation), has changed my academic interests more and more. Recently, I have become interested in studying immigration policy by using several quantitative research methods and policy modelings. Professor Chris Herbest's advanced regression class last semester also caused me to become interested in econometric analyses in several substantive policy areas.

Environmental policy and management is a new field to me. However, I am interested in international environmental issues (such climate change and greenhouse gases) and if possible, I would like to study them with various research methods. During last winter vacation, I had an opportunity to study behavioral economics and the nudge effect with theoretical logic based on libertarian paternalism and choice architecture. At that time, I attempted to apply an environmental issue on the "climate-friendly food labeling system" in Sweden to the nudge effect. While studying this topic last winter, I thought that environmental policy and related issues can be a very interesting policy topic for me.

Anyway, I hope this class will be an opportunity for me to ascertain my academic passion as well as find some good research topics. Thanks and see you in the online blackboard and your blogs!!