Our food production system is facing unprecedented challenges. That was the stark warning issued by the Foresight report on the future of food and farming over a year ago. It highlighted increased demand for food, climate change, volatile food prices along with diet-related disease as reasons why food has to become a political priority. Essentially, more food has to be produced with a lower impact.
But far from seeing a co-ordinated and concerted effort across the whole of government to address these threats, we’ve instead had the Green Food Project, limited to Defra and, so far, only focused on production without considering the wider implications for policy and consumers.
The next phase will look more at consumer issues, but with proposals from the European Commission on sustainable food coming next year, a much wider debate involving the consumer about what food production and our food choices should look like in the coming years is needed.
” A much wider debate about food production and choices is needed”
Food prices are one of the top financial concerns for people, with the latest Which? Quarterly Consumer Report finding 75% of people are worried about them. But our focus group research found most people unaware of the other issues dominating the discussions around food such as sustainability, crop failure and growing populations.
So to get people involved in the decisions around food policy, Which? this month launched a national Future of Food debate. We will be running four citizens’ juries in Belfast, Cardiff, Glasgow and London, where people will be presented with some of the dilemmas we are faced with as a nation - food security and affordability, environmental impact, obesity, food safety, sustainable food choices and the wider social aspects of what we eat. Alongside this, a Which? travelling video booth will capture people’s views on what is most important when deciding how we produce food.
The FSA, set up to put the consumer first, has had many of its responsibilities removed. Nutrition policy is behind closed doors at the Department of Health and Defra has responsibility for promoting producers as well as protecting consumers.
We would like to see the government put a food strategy in place that gives a vision of how these questions about our food production will be answered and ensures coordinated action between the departments.
The Future of Food debate aims to make sure that government and industry account for the consumer’s point of view when making decisions on food production. We will be presenting our recommendations later in the year, putting the consumer voice back at the heart of policymaking.
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