9th January 2009
There has been a flurry of activity in Whitehall about the security and sustainability of our food supply – an issue fundamental to our health and wellbeing. Where we get our food from, what we eat and how it gets from farm to plate is exercising policy makers and the debate is set to impact on health, food safety, the economy, climate change and sustainability.
Much like nutrition five years ago, when policy makers realised that obesity had knocked smoking off its pedestal as the single greatest threat to health, expect a plethora of central government policies over the next few years designed to provide us with a sustainable and secure food supply.
Regional and local government will be expected to help deliver the outcomes of the policy deliberations.
Food advisers
Hilary Benn, secretary of state for environment food and rural affairs, announced last month the setting up of the Council of Food Policy Advisers tasked with ensuring a sustainable and secure food supply under the chairmanship of Suzi Leather, formerly of the Food Standards Agency. It will report directly to Mr Benn and plans to meet monthly advising on all aspects of food policy ranging from production, retail, regulation and distribution through to consumption.
Before progress can be made there has to be consensus on what is meant by a sustainable food supply. The debate was kick-started by a number of government reports and discussion papers over the last six months. Food Matters, published by the Cabinet Office strategy unit in July, is the most comprehensive of these, providing government with a policy framework from which it is hoped a food strategy will emerge.
Historically, debates on climate change and the food supply have focused on food production and the environmental impact of farming. But as the UK imports 37 per cent of its food, the government has recognised it must look at environmental impacts throughout the food chain. If government imposes onerous and costly environmental regulations on producers, retailers will shift to cheaper, imported foods and so shift the environmental burden elsewhere.
In the last machinery of government changes Defra was given the job of co-ordinating on food across Whitehall. Bronwen Jones, the head of Defra’s food team, is working with stakeholders to look at everything that happens after the farm gate and develop a shared vision of what a sustainable food supply would look like.
"It is important first of all for everyone to be clear about what we mean by sustainable and to get a degree of consensus," says Ms Jones. "Clearly we will have to have lower greenhouse gas impact and use less oils and water. We need to sustain the things we rely on to produce food, basically water, soil and biodiversity. Those are basic and without those you can’t produce food or sustain life on the planet. But then you get into other issues that are more difficult, but I believe there are a number of areas where we can get consensus."
One area of consensus is around food waste. Up to 40 per cent of food harvested in the developed world is lost before it is consumed, with UK consumers throwing away 4.1 million tonnes of food a year – £420 per household per annum.
Food we Waste, a report published by the Waste & Resources Action Programme (Wrap) earlier this year found that salad, fruit and bread were most commonly wasted and that 60 per cent of all dumped food was untouched. Meat and fish make up 18 per cent of the total money wasted on food while an estimated 5,500 whole chickens are thrown away each day. Of the £10.2bn of avoidable food waste thrown out each year by UK households, £1bn was still in date. The Wrap report found that a quarter in terms of cost was disposed of because the "use by" or "best before" date had expired.
Recognising food waste to be one of the biggest contributors to climate change, Defra is working with Wrap to see how these figures can be cut. While there is some anecdotal evidence that two for one supermarket deals are contributing to food waste, there is insufficient evidence, says Ms Jones.
However, confusion over "sell by" and "best before" dates is something the government can do something about and the FSA will be working with industry to see how clearer messages can be put on packaging without compromising food safety.
Storage
Another reason for food waste is our loss of understanding about the storage and management of foods. The government announced at the beginning of the year plans to reintroduce compulsory cookery lessons for secondary school children. While this will go some way to educate people, there remains a lost generation who do not understand the basics of food management. There may be a role here for local government in trying to get advice on storage and food safety out into the community.
But Jeanette Longfield, head of the food lobbying group Sustain, believes government should be looking further up the food chain. "There is still an enormous amount of stuff that is rejected because it is too white, too brown or too knobbly," says Ms Longfield. "While the EU has just changed cosmetic regulations for fresh produce they have not changed the ones for the most common fruit and vegetables so we are still throwing away food that is the wrong colour. This is the first thing that needs to be sorted."
There is less agreement around the thorny issue of our meat consumption. Thought to be one of the most thorough studies of its kind, a four-year investigation by the Food Climate Research Unit at the University of Surrey published in September concluded that meat consumption needs to be cut by half, with animals being fed as much as possible on grass and food waste.
The report estimates that food produced in the UK accounts for 18.5 per cent of the country’s total emissions while food consumed in the UK and produced at home and abroad accounts for 19 per cent. The research reveals that meat and dairy production alone is responsible for 8 per cent of our total greenhouse emissions and more than half of food-related emissions. The report excludes the indirect impacts of actions such as clearing rain forests for cattle and crops, which other studies estimate would add up to 5 per cent to 20 per cent of global emissions.
Prof Tim Lang, CIEH vice-president and adviser to the Cabinet Office and Defra on food policy, is adamant that only by cutting meat consumption can we hope to achieve a sustainable food chain.
"A few policy tweaks here and there is not what is required. Just to address climate change, current data suggests meat and dairy have to come down dramatically," he warns.
"Cutting down on them would be good for climate change, good for cardiovascular health, good for diet-related cancers, good for embedded water and good for greenhouse gases. One Dutch study found, for example, that each hamburger made from intensively reared meat has 2,400 litres of pure drinking water embedded into it. UK hill-reared meat might be different but only slightly. The point is that sustainability isn’t just a matter of climate change but water, energy, biodiversity, and lots of other issues too."
Minefield
For a government responsible for the economic welfare of farmers and conscious of the nation’s intolerance at already being preached to about alcohol misuse, smoking, diet and exercise, cutting meat consumption is a potential minefield. Meat eating is seen by some as part of the British way of life so one of the areas of discussion among Defra stakeholders will have to be what a sustainable meat supply would look like. Grass reared cattle are a more sustainable meat source. Unfortunately, grass only grows for around half the year in the UK.
Ms Longfield believes a way around this is to use the public health message to change our meat eating habits. "You can’t go around telling people they can’t eat bacon sandwiches but what you can do is tell people what they don’t already know, like meat and processed meat consumption is very strongly linked to cancer," she says.
'We now have an agreed best practice method for measuring the climate change impact of anything – food, non-food or a service such as a bank’
Bronwen Jones, Defra
"Most people are more terrified of cancer than anything else and it is the sort of information that should be put out by the big cancer charities rather than government."
More sustainable public procurement policies around food could be another way of reducing meat consumption. One billion meals are served in schools, hospitals, prisons and care homes each year. The Food Matters report has called for the introduction of a Healthier Food Mark covering the nutritional content, sustainable sourcing and portion sizes of food provided by the public sector. This provides an opportunity to look at meat content as well.
Another recommendation from Food Matters is the need for greater consumer information on what is sustainable and healthy food. More holistic advice is expected to come from the Food Standards Agency over the next few years as reliable evidence emerges on what is sustainable. The agency has also been asked to work with food businesses and consumers to understand what sort of information people would find helpful when eating away from home.
But it is not just government that is trying to inform consumers about the environmental impact of the food they buy. Last year Tesco head Terry Leahy announced he wanted to find a universally accepted way to measure the carbon footprint of every item in his stores. He told delegates at the Forum for the Future: "It will enable us to label all our products so that consumers can compare their carbon footprint as easily as they can currently compare their price or their nutritional profile."
Carbon measure
This interest in carbon labelling prompted Defra to join with the Carbon Trust and the BSI to sponsor a carbon measurement methodology launched in October.
"We now have an agreed best practice method for measuring the climate change impact of anything, food, non-food or a service such as a bank," says Ms Jones.
"It is an important building block in moving forward as a lot of businesses will be using it to measure their carbon footprint. So rather than government working our way through millions of food products ticking them off people will for their own business reasons now start to generate that knowledge."
Food miles have long been thought of as a serious climate change culprit. The inventor of the term, Prof Lang, maintains that they are still a serious contributor. "Food miles still pose a serious problem. Between 1992 and 2005 car users going to get their food went up by 27 per cent. One-in-four lorries on the British roads transports food, half of which are empty, while HGV CO2 emissions account for 45 per cent of all food transport including air and sea," says Prof Lang.
Government, however, is less clear-cut about the impact of food miles. It believes that large retailers are reducing HGV vehicle movements as they look for efficiencies in their supply chains and points to the food industry sustainability strategy which aims to cut transport costs by 20 per cent by 2012 by fewer transport kilometres, more efficient distribution centres, improved driver performance and new trailer designs.
There is also evidence that at some times during the year transporting produce from other countries may have a lower impact than refrigerating produce grown in Britain. A recent government discussion paper Food: an analysis of the issues concluded on food miles that: "an appropriate mixing of imports and locally sourced food to match the seasons could reduce overall impacts on the environment".
While government has reservations about how environmentally damaging food miles actually are, it does believe that local food produce can play an important role in reconnecting consumers with seasonable foods rather than them expecting everything on supermarket shelves all year around.
Food Matters wants to see local authorities nurturing the population’s growing interest in food production by encouraging more farmers’ markets and food fairs. It also wants more encouragement for social enterprises that work with communities on food issues and more allotments retained. Waiting lists for allotments are at an all-time high while sales of vegetable seeds have outstripped flower seed sales for the first time since the Second World War.
Trade-off
At the other end of the food mile spectrum is one of the most conspicuous examples of unsustainable food sourcing, all year round air-freighted beans from countries like Kenya.
This poses a dilemma for government. While food airfreight has been steadily increasing since 1992 it still only accounts for 0.1 per cent of our food chain vehicle kilometres. Despite its small volume, airfreight contributes 15 per cent of total greenhouse gas emissions from food-related transport.
This, according to Defra, is an acceptable cost when you think of the impact shutting down these food sources will have on the developing world.
"There is clearly a big climate change footprint in flying stuff over, but the value to African farmers, some of the poorest people in the world, is critical," says Ms Jones.
"We have discussed this with Dfid and between us we feel the development benefit far outweigh the climate damage, certainly at levels happening now, which is not a lot. There is a trade-off between the legitimate needs of people in the world to develop and become more prosperous and the climate downside."
Jenny Morris, CIEH principal policy officer, believes the profession needs to prepare for sustainability, as it becomes an increasingly significant issue in the coming years.
"While sustainability may not seem a mainstream issue for EHPs at present the consequences will impact on daily practice as we are increasingly required to support new local food producers and play a role in educating consumers and retailers," she says.
"There is much to be done locally as well as nationally and environmental health should make the case for early action to ensure a secure and sustainable food supply.