The food and drink industry could have been forgiven for a major sense of déjà vu today, as details emerged of the latest chapter in the government’s stop-start food strategy, under the new banner Food Nation 2040.

It’s billed as a collaboration between government and industry that will seek to come up with a practical action plan to tackle the massive issues facing the industry on health, farming and the environment. How will this be any different to what has gone before (or rather what has not)?

That is the obvious first question. As for the project’s aims, the benefit of having a “framework of action” on health, resilience and growth is clear.

So too is the aim of bringing the whole food industry – from farming to supermarkets, manufacturers and out of home – to the table, to ensure joined-up action across the supply chain.

But what is not yet clear is why this will achieve results. Over the previous seven years the industry has talked, ministers have talked, NGOs have talked – but precious little has actually been achieved in the way of fundamental action to tackle these issues. 

The food strategy so far

In 2019, then lesser-known Leon boss Henry Dimbleby, appointed by Michael Gove, revealed he had brought in a panel of industry big hitters to lead the first food review in 75 years.

Despite major disruption from Covid, his original advisory panel – including the likes of Sainsbury’s legend Justin King, NFU leader Minette Batters and Greggs boss Roger Whiteside – helped the food tsar come up with a major plan of action in the food strategy published in 2021.

But its recommendations, including controversial plans for a swathe of taxes on HFSS products, were largely ignored by ministers. Although many felt Labour may use the report as a ready-made basis for its food strategy, it had other ideas.

Instead when Steve Reed stood up, in the thick of farmers protests at Westminster during the winter of 2024, he called for a new “collaboration of the willing”, urging food sector leaders, academics, and charities to tackle the challenges of obesity reduction, food resilience, and nature protection. Sound familiar?

From that, another new group of industry and outside talents formed the Food Strategy Advisory Board (FSAB) the following spring. Their job was to advise the government on what action to take.

If a pattern was not already emerging, the writing really became clear on the wall when former PM Keir Starmer blunted the teeth of the food strategy in the summer of 2025 by insisting that plans for a food white paper were stopped before they’d even really started.

It left a strategy with sweeping aims but little in the way of practical action. When Daniel Zeichner, the well-intentioned minister leading the plans, was axed in a Cabinet reshuffle, the food strategy disappeared into the long grass, where it has largely remained, until now.

A new chapter

However, now we have a new chapter and one that promises to learn from the mistakes of the past. It points to “clearer priorities” and “measures of progress” as well as pledging to tackle the thorny issue of how to manage “trade-offs” between health, affordability, growth, food security and sustainability, uneasy bedfellows and other competing challenges which previously meant making progress was more like wading through treacle.

Food Nation 2040 will be overseen by the IGD, the closest the food industry has got to an umbrella group. It is also inviting trade bodies back into the room. This is a wise move, with both the FSAB and Dimbleby’s panel of experts having clearly left some noses out of joint in the past. How that goes down with NGOs is another matter, of course.

The government is stressing this is not a full relaunch of the food strategy and that the FSAB will continue to meet until at least March 2027. But leading industry sources have been saying for months that the strategy has been allowed to drift.

The issues facing the food industry are all too clear at the moment, with climate change, geopolitical turmoil, the cost of living crisis, obesity and the impact of weight-loss drugs all requiring urgent action.

And it does feel like many in the industry recognise this. It could be seen at IGD’s conference last September, and at The Grocer Health Summit last week, where Sainsbury’s boss and IGD president Simon Roberts issued an impassioned call for industry and government to come together to take action.

But recognising the need for change, especially at the top echelons, is a world away from providing a concrete framework that makes the necessary impact across the whole supply chain. And for some, the ‘2040’ part of this new chapter will be setting off alarm bells.

Action not words

By 2040, it will have been more than two decades since Dimbleby and his team of free thinkers drew up the National Food Strategy.

And while a recent IGD report concluded the winners in 2040 will be decided by those who take action today, not those who wait, it remains to be seen how Food Nation 2040 will operate and exactly what mechanisms will ensure that really does mean action not words.

The questions remain: what happens now with issues such as plans for mandatory health reporting and targets, the proposed shift to a new nutrient profiling model, changes to the planning system to help farmers, interventions to help food poverty in the UK’s most deprived areas, and so on.

None of this can wait until 2040.

As one industry source puts it: “Henry Dimbleby, at the government’s request, wrote an amazing report with many sensible proposals that most people could agree on and the government didn’t do anything.

“Then the new food strategy came out and they took away the white paper so it was toothless.

“Of course it would be a good thing for industry across the food sector to be agreeing on key interventions, but it needs the government to be making sure this happens by showing leadership through regulation, not, as has happens for so many years, ducking the big decisions.”

All eyes will now be on Defra to see how it expects the new body to operate and, ultimately, who calls the shots.

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