PM in Olympic bid to tackle world hunger
"We are thinking about the next medal but there are millions of children around the world thinking: 'Am I going to get my next meal?'” Cameron told ITV’s Daybreak TV programme. “There are 170M children who are malnourished.”
More than 1M children in the Sahel region of West Africa alone are at risk of severe malnutrition, according to charities. Over 18M people are reported to be suffering from the effects of drought and high food prices.
Petitions from aid charities, signed by 0.5M people, demanding action will be delivered to Downing Street today (August 10).
The London summit will include world leaders, business figures, non-government organisations and development campaigners.
Olympic legacy
The charity Save the Children said the summit was a chance to create “the most important Olympic legacy of all time”.
Meanwhile, Mary Creagh, shadow environment minister and Labour MP for Wakefield told Food Manufacture last month that urgent action was needed to tackle food speculation.
“I would like government to take action on commodities, working at G20 level to look at the way that food has become another asset class for the large banks, like Barclays and JP Morgan, who are packaging up commodity trading as just another thing that you buy to vary your portfolio,” she said.
“You’ve got people coming into the commodities market who will never take delivery of wheat. They are speculating on it. The way that the commodity market has grown in the past 10 years, commodities have just become another financial product and they are not: they are the stuff we eat.”
Read more about Creagh’s views on food price speculation in the September issue of Food Manufacture.
To find out if you are eligible for a free copy, click here or contact our circulation team on 0800 652 6512.
