Joined-up thinking is the key to food policy
Tackling inequalities of access to a healthy, low-impact diet is identified as a priority. But again the solution is through education rather than force-feeding. People need to actually want the food before they buy it, let alone eat it.
Affordability is highlighted as an issue but without referring to the fact that expenditure on food as a proportion of disposable income is much lower now than it was 20 years ago.
Maybe, spending priorities need to be addressed. A healthy diet can be cheaper than an unhealthy one, not just because the amount eaten is lower, but also because family meals cooked from scratch can be less expensive.
The general tenor of the report is commonsensical. Although some of its contents may not appeal to the more radical minority stakeholders who tend towards a more interventionist approach such as attempts to restrict production of certain types of food and even bans.
But the report does not avoid the question of whether it might be necessary to "sacrifice" part of the livestock sector to meet emission targets if larger cuts cannot be made elsewhere. This may have become less of a problem because the UN report, originally claiming that meat production contributed 18% of greenhouse gas emissions, has been challenged since the Food Policy Council's work.
Most importantly, the report highlights the need for better coordination of food policy across government departments. This aspiration isn't new. So let us hope that, this time, it will come closer to being achieved in practice.
That endeavour is made more difficult by the fragmentation that has occurred following devolution of powers to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
The report tries to turn this into an advantage by describing it as a "policy laboratory". I thought we'd been living in a policy laboratory for decades. Now, just as some green shoots of realistic thinking seem to be emerging from the maelstrom, another form of policy laboratory is being anticipated. Surely there is no time for more experimentation. The paper says the government, having set the direction, "now needs to set the pace without further delay". Which government is this? A pan-UK one or a committee of four and the English regions?
Clare Cheney is director general of the Provision Trade Federation
Email: clare.cheney@provtrade.co.uk
