Would you return to the food of the fifties?
Nowadays there's hardly a dull day for food news. Except for April 11 2010. The day when Food Standards Agency Northern Ireland opened a consultation on amendments to Regulations on Food for Particular Nutritional Uses. Hoping to find something more interesting on the new Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) website, I was disappointed. The oldest news was the appointment of Caroline Spelman on May 13 2010. What had happened? I looked in the 'old' site where the old Food and Farming tab opens a page on Foot and Mouth Disease. Maybe the new regime wants to remind us of the worst news under the last administration. Trying to find pre-election news was like playing one of those retro point and click computer games where the right combination will get you to the next stage.
After pointing and clicking for several minutes, I was directed, quite serendipitously, to the National Archives into which all DEFRA's pre-election news had been dumped. The discovery was news to me. But there was nothing for April 11 because of the pre-election moratorium.
Today, the main food news surrounds the country of origin labelling manifesto signed by the large retailers, saying that if the label says 'British' it means 'British'. Well it should have done before. And if it didn't, the offending companies should have been tackled instead of imposing a sledgehammer solution that will make life difficult for food producers who are, quite lawfully, supplying food that contains raw materials from other countries.
These days, if the facts aren't newsworthy enough the national press is wont to dramatise them. The Guardian recently accused the government of handing the responsibility for writing UK policy on obesity and diet-related diseases to multinational food companies. But it does not matter who produces the policy, progress cannot be made unless consumers are motivated to select healthy diets. This requires a complete culture change unless we revert to 1954 when all food was British, imports were banned and there was barely enough food for our much smaller population. Stand up anyone who thinks those were halcyon days.
Clare Cheney is director general of the Provision Trade Federation
