At the Choice Choices Forum, we demonstrated a prototype shelf labeling system intended to provide Coop Shoppers with easy to use information showing how the products fared when compared to their basic expectations. This effort addresses The Food Coop's Ends Policy A3 ""  In the months since the Choices Choices Forum, the Coop's Product Selection Guidelines Committee has been developing and refining a matrix that could allow us - and other coops as well - to evaluate every product in terms of Nutritional, Social, Environmental and Criteria based on the Coop's adopted policies

We are clearly NOT alone in this effort. Other Coops and many non-coop retail organizations including Home Depot and TESCO (one of the largest retailers in Europe) are already implementing product labeling programs. Many of these programs focus only on carbon footprint, but there is mounting pressure to integrate country of origin, conditions of production (such as Fair Trade or Sustainable Harvest certification) as well as more meaningful nutritional information than is currently provided by manufacturers.

Generally, it can be stated that the manufacturers are resisting increased disclosure of nutritional information while protesting easy to understand systems such as Red, Yellow and Green "traffic light" symbols indicating safe to unsafe levels of Fat, Saturated Fat, Salt, and Sugar. In the USA, the USDA and FDA are both relaxing their ingredients labeling requirements and the specificity of terms used on labels.

The proposal for a shelf edge label was offered at our Choices Choices, and the example below was demo'd and discussed. The 'radical' concepts it carries are the quantification and specification of local (our coop sells 'local' coffee!), the ratio of packaging calories to nutritional payload calories (discussed in considerable detail in a Coop Commons article last year), full disclosure of markup on the product, and number of stops between producer and consumer.

What other organizations are approaching product labeling?

Food labelling debate on a collision course
"One of the main problems in this ongoing food labeling debate is that both sides appear to be so deeply polarized. For example, many in the food industry believe that, while the GDA scheme is criticized for being too complicated, the FSA's traffic light labeling scheme, which rates each product as high (red light), medium (amber light) or low (green light) in the four key nutrients (fat, saturated fat, salt and sugar), is far too simplistic."

USDA clearly has been thinking about it.
This does not mean they have been thinking clearly of course ...

And LOTS of people outside the "organic business of food" are getting into the act -

And Carbon Foot Print Labeling

Home Depot to Apply Carbon Foot print Labels

Energy Use in the Food Sector: A data survey
This database can be used for estimating the energy use for various food items over their lifecycle. The applicability of the database is exemplified by estimating the energy requirements of a hamburger with bread, lettuce, onions, cucumbers and cheese. The possibilities for lowering the energy use of a hamburger are discussed briefly on the basis of the results.

... by Jamais Cascio (author of the Cheeseburger Carbon Footprint)
Late last month, the UK's environment secretary, David Milbrand, proposed putting ecological impact labels on all food products sold in UK stores. These labels would focus on the amount of carbon emitted as the result of the production of the food item. In this, the UK government is playing catch-up with some of its businesses, as the grocery chain Tesco announced in late January that it would be adding carbon labels to the products it sold. And now the Carbon Trust, a UK non-profit that works with businesses to reduce their greenhouse impacts, has embarked on an effort to build a labeling standard for adoption across industries.