Our thinking

Warning from within

11 April, 2025

This week, an group of anonymous senior figures from across the UK food industry, known as Inside Track x Food, released a memo to investors with a stark warning: the sector is “heading towards meltdown” and businesses aren’t being honest about it.

The memo makes for troubling reading. The insiders warn of a system headed for collapse because of a web of interconnected environmental crises, while businesses downplay the risks and fail to act with the level of urgency needed. It’s a familiar message – many businesses are still not taking climate risks seriously enough.

What’s different here is the mechanism. Inside Track uses whistleblowing laws, typically reserved for exposing malpractice and illegal behaviour, to support insiders to sound the alarm anonymously. Unlike traditional legal interventions around environmental action from groups like ClientEarth, which seek to use law to hold companies to account, this is a new kind of legal intervention, using legal frameworks to for action from within.

That insiders are resorting to legal anonymity protections to raise climate concerns is concerning. It suggests that the traditional routes for driving change aren’t cutting through, with sustainability continuing to be treated like a compliance issue rather than a strategic imperative. And if those closest to the risks feel the only way to be heard is anonymously, it’s time for leadership to start listening.

By Lucy Bell