The Competition Commission has suggested a supermarket ombudsman / watchdog as a possible remedy to the problems identified in its lengthy investigation into the UK’s grocery market. The proposal has been welcomed by farmers and other supermarket suppliers, but starkly opposed by most of the large retailers.

The NFU-actionaid ad makes clear the breadth of support for tighter control of supermarket buying practices, from both domestic and global producers. The accompanying press release reports independent research by Professor Roger Clarke, Professor of Microeconomics at Cardiff University, that finds that an ombudsman would result in higher prices for consumers, as claimed by some supermarkets. Professor Clarke explains:

The remedies, if effectively enforced, are likely to lead to lower prices in some cases, like agricultural products.

Even very small price reductions and other benefits are likely to result in consumer benefits that far outweigh the modest cost of an ombudsman. A supermarket watchdog would not only benefit consumers but also be, arguably, in the interests of the supermarkets themselves.

The text of the ad is worth quoting in full:

Fairer deal for farmers, workers and consumers

Wherever this asparagus is grown the problem is the same. The abuse of market power by retailers means that farmers and growers in the developing and developed world are subject to unreasonable demands. This means they are less able to invest and innovate for the future, which results in consumers losing out as choice is reduced.

The 11 largest UK supermarkets have just 48 hours left to sign up to the new Ombudsman proposed by the Competition Commission. A strong supermarket code of practice policed by an Ombudsman is in consumers’ best interest. A recent Yougov poll showed that 8 out of 10 shoppers back an Ombudsman.

To date only Waitrose, Marks & Spencer and Aldi have said they do not oppose further regulation. Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Morrisons, Asda, Iceland, Somerfield and Lidl are refusing to support the Ombudsman, while the Co-op remains undecided.

ActionAid and the NFU are calling on all supermarkets to sign up in the next 48 hours.

Responsible retailers have nothing to fear from an Ombudsman. So, who will be first to sign?

So, well done Waitrose, M&S, Aldi! Shame on the rest of you if you can’t bring yourselves to accept policing of your business practices.

Related posts:

1. Supermarkets and the Prevention, Distortion and Restriction of Competition
2. Twittered morsels for 2010-01-13
3. Books, eggs and the illusion of provenance

The Atlas of Food: Who Eats What, Where and Why

Every day, the world’s food system has 6.5 billion mouths to feed. It’s humanity’s single biggest undertaking: 1.3 billion farm-workers work 4.9 billion Ha with 26.2 million tractors, applying $30.2 billion worth of pesticides, to produce 356 kg of grain each year for every person alive.

Still the system isn’t working: “2 billion people suffer from chronic under-nutrition and 18 million die each year from hunger-related diseases”. The 356 kg would be plenty to feed everyone if equally shared, but distribution is far from equal despite global trade flows of 774 millions tonnes of food a year. We’re producing enough food (for now) and moving it around the earth’s surface in vast quantities, but we’re still failing to adequately feed a third of the world’s population.

Meanwhile, agriculture faces increasing challenges: climate change, soil degradation (9% of the world’s agricultural land is suffering “strong, extreme” soil degradation and a further 43% “moderate”), water shortages (26 countries are forecast to be suffering water scarcity by 2050 and a further 12 water stress) and resource constraints. All this and a further 3 billion people to feed by 2050, with growing demand for resource-hungry meat and dairy products.

Understanding the world’s food system better is essential if we’re to face these challenges and move towards a more equitable and sustainable way of feeding ourselves. The burden of understanding and action weighs on each of us: we’re all participants in the global food system, whether as consumers, producers or both.

Tim Lang and Erik Millstone’s updated edition of The Atlas of Food in an invaluable guide to the complexities and scale of world food, presenting clear maps and charts of the many elements of our production, trade, marketing and consumption of food. The graphics illustrate the figures behind our food and highlight striking geographic variations; tucked away at the back of the book are detailed tables of the source data and references.

The authors’ mostly restrained commentary helps to elicit meaning from the figures and graphs. There’s an underlying polemic of sustainability (no surprises there), but the authors rely mostly on the force of the information to guide our thinking (though there are few easy answers to the issues faced by such a complex system):

• The percentage of the US beef trade controlled by the top four companies grew from 72% to 81% between 1990 and 2000
• It takes 930 kg of grain to feed a person for a year on a meat-based diet, just 180 kg on a grain-based diet
• 75% of all EU agricultural land is used for growing animal feed
• Denmark slaughters 3,986 pigs per 1,000 people per year; the world average is 194
• Agricultural wages in Mexico are 15% of manufacturing wages
• Namibia has lost 26% of its agricultural labour force to AIDS
• 30% of Russia’s food is produced on suburban land
• 14% of London households grow vegetables in the garden
• 65% of fish stocks are fully exploited or over-exploited
• Of 649 identified pig breeds, 151 are extinct, 58 critical and 106 endangered
• 80% of farmers in developing countries do not need to change their methods to be certified organic
• Australia exports over 5 million live sheep each year to the Middle East

These are just a handful of the indicators of the state of our food system provided by The Atlas of Food. Immerse yourself in the book’s facts, figures and charts, and draw your own conclusions.

(All quotes and figures – unless otherwise referenced – are taken from The Atlas of Food: Who Eats What, Where and Why (The Earthscan Atlas Series) – first edition.)

Related posts:

1. Tim Lang’s new fundamentals of food policy

Watch out for medicines

I was horrified to notice, this morning, that our one year-old daughter’s prescribed medicine contains two of the additives: sodium benzoate (E211) and quinoline yellow (E104). The medicine in question is an anti-biotic, Amoxicillin Oral Suspension 125mg/5ml BP Sugar Free, prescribed for an ear infection. Its lurid yellow colour and sickly fake-banana smell was enough to cause suspicion, though I have to admit it appealed enough to our daughter for her to take her dose submissively, even enthusiastically.

Parents seeking to follow the Food Standards Agency’s advice to avoid products with the Southampton additives need to watch out for medicines as well as the more usual suspects of confectionery, soft drinks and other foods.

Side effects?

While various side-effects are listed on the medicine’s information sheet, including possible ill-effects from another additive, sorbitol (E420), there’s no mention of the possible effects of E211 and E104 on a child’s behaviour. The research establishing the link to hyperactivity has been documented in the leading medical research journal, The Lancet.

Still, while food manufacturers are – in some cases, painfully slowly – removing the Southampton additives from their products, it seems that medicines may be overlooked. And it’s even harder for parents to avoid medicines with the additives, as a medicine may simply be prescribed or only list the ingredients inside the pack.

Vigilant campaigning

The ever-vigilant Food Commission is on the case, noting in the Food Magazine that 40% of children’s medicines surveyed in early 2008 contained one or more of the additives and campaigning for pharmaceutical manufacturers to remove them. As the progress of some food manufacturers is demonstrating, there’s no need to use these additives at all any more.

The Food Commission’s Action on Additives website lists medicines containing the additives as well as foods, though the extensive list is sadly incomplete – Amoxicillin is not listed. (The website allows users to submit details of additional products.)

Related posts:

1. Bad colours: which foods still contain them?

Food policy is in desperate need of considered direction if a sustainable food system is to emerge from the modern food industry, analysed by Tim Lang in his books The Atlas of Food: Who Eats What, Where and Why (updated edition 2008, with Erik Millstone) and Food Wars: The Battle for Mouths, Minds and Markets (with Michael Heasman, 2004).

The new fundamentals of food policy

In the meantime, the transcript of Tim Lang’s speech to the Garden Organic AGM 2008 gives a compelling insight into his recent thoughts on the rapidly changing food policy landscape. In this speech, Professor Lang identifies the ten “new fundamentals” of the 21st century world of food:

1. Oil and energy
2. Water
3. Climate change
4. Biodiversity
5. Demographics
6. Urbanisation
7. Labour
8. Nutrition transition
9. Health care costs
10. Battles of power and price volatility

Each of these issues clearly plays an important part in the working of the food system and the way we eat. Each of them must be addressed and the right answers found if we’re to create a sustainable food system, in the real sense of one that can feed us and future generations. It’s reassuring that Tim Lang is a member of Defra’s recently created Council of Food Policy Advisors.

The only obvious gap in this list of fundamentals is any recognition of taste and culture, the aspects of food that can bring so much rich pleasure and fulfilment to our everyday lives.

Summarising the fundamentals

The following clips show Lang’s concise summaries of each of the ten fundamentals and why they matter:

Oil

Water

Climate change

Biodiversity

Demographics

Urbanisation

Labour

Nutrition transition

Health care costs

Battles of power

Related posts:

1. Twittered morsels: Norman Borlaug, food policy
2. Food in books: mapping the world’s food
3. Morsels: Nordic diet, spring foraging, seasonal rhubarb, London wine, food policy, eating seaweed

If a child shows signs of hyperactivity or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), eliminating the colours considered in the Southampton study from their diet might have some beneficial effect on their behaviour.

The FSA states the link and the advice in less than certain terms: “a possible link”, “might have some beneficial effect”. However, the Lancet’s abstract of the research findings is much more definite:

Interpretation
Artificial colours or a sodium benzoate preservative (or both) in the diet result in increased hyperactivity in 3-year-old and 8/9-year-old children in the general population.

Colour additives associated with child hyperactivity

The six artificial colours identified were:

• sunset yellow FCF (E110)
• quinoline yellow (E104)
• carmoisine (E122)
• allura red (E129)
• tartrazine (E102)
• ponceau 4R (E124)

Despite the evidence linking these colours and Sodium Benzoate (E211) – “the Southampton seven additives” – with hyperactivity, the European Food Standards Agency has failed to act decisively to ban them from foods. The UK Food Standards Agency chooses only to list products declared free from the colours.

Products free from colour additives associated with child hyperactivity

The FSA maintains its partial list of products that don’t contain these colours, issuing an updated list today. Unfortunately the list is based on information provided voluntarily by food manufacturers. Only the following companies have confirmed that their specified products don’t contain the colours:

• Asian Asset Group – Worldfoods products
• Blue Keld Springs Ltd – Blue Keld Springs products
• Cookfood – Cookfood products
• Cool Drinks company – Cool Drinks company range of drinks
• Green Bay – Green Bay products
• Heinz – Heinz products, Weight Watchers from Heinz products, HP products, Lea & Perrins products
• Lakeland – Lakeland products
• Montgomeryshire Spring Water company – Montgomeryshire Spring Water products
• Plas Farm Ltd - Plas Farm products
• Rubicon Drinks – Rubicon products, Sun Exotic products
• Sunny Delight Beverage Company – Sunny Delight Beverage Company products
• Vimto Soft Drinks – Vimto products, Panda drinks, Sunkist drinks
• Zipvit – Project ZV products

Which products contain the colour additives associated with child hyperactivity?

Of far greater interest to parents would be a list of products that do contain the offending colours. While the FSA doesn’t compile such a list, Action on Additives (a Food Commission campaign) does, providing a useful searchable database of 520 products containing the colours listed above and Sodium Benzoate (E211), also associated with hyperactivity. Action on Additives also provides additional information on the colour additives and Sodium Benzoate.

Searching the database quickly reveals numerous popular products that contained one or more of these additives on the specified date of purchase. The following are, sadly, just a small selection:

• Cadbury – Mini Eggs (contained E122, E129 – January 2009)
• Mars – M&Ms (contained E104, E129 – September 2008) M&Ms purchased in April 2009 no longer contain any of the listed colours
• Irn Bru (contained E110, E124 – September 2008)
• Jelly Belly – The Original Gourmet Jelly Bean (contained E102, E110, E129 – October 2008)
• Tesco Sugar Free Cherryade (contained E122 – December 2008)
• Maynards Wine Gums (contained E104, E122, E129 – September 2008)

Broken promises or steady improvement?

A recent press release from Action on Additives claims that Mars and Cadbury have broken promises made last year in not removing these colours from all their products. Cadbury has responded to the Food Commission’s accusations, asserting that it has fulfilled its promise to remove all the offending colours from its range of “sweets” (a category that doesn’t include chocolates) and is working on its chocolate products:

The Food Commission has got it wrong. We achieved our goal of removing all artificial colours from our sweets range by the end of last year as we promised. There are a very small number of chocolate products, such as Cadbury Creme Egg, which also contain colours, that presented more difficult technical challenges.

However, we have resolved these and, as of this month, no Creme or Mini Creme Eggs leaving our factories contain artificial colours. We have completed testing on the remaining chocolate brands to ensure consumers enjoy the same quality, and these will also be switched over in the coming months.

Meanwhile, Mars has stated that it has been working to remove the colours since 2006:

By the end of 2008, all of the Southampton seven additives were removed from all of our chocolate products except for Minstrels and Revels which we are working to achieve by the end of 2009 – this information has been publicly available on our consumer care website for several months.

In addition, we had planned to achieve the removal of Southampton Colours from Starburst Choozers by the end of 2008, but have encountered some small technical difficulties which means that this has been delayed by a few weeks. On 6 March, we started to manufacture Starburst Choozers free from these colours and anticipate these will start to appear on shelves in May.

The Tracing Paper has found that M&Ms no longer contain any of the Southampton additives. A packet purchased in April 2009 lists the following colours: E120, E133, E160a, E160e, E171. (Vegetarians should note that E120 is cochineal, a red colouring derived from crushed insect carcases.)

More products with bad colours

Unfortunately, even Action on Additives’ extensive list isn’t complete. The supermarket comparison site, mySupermarket.co.uk, provides helpful lists of ingredients for many products supplied by Tesco, ASDA, Sainsbury’s and Ocado (ie Waitrose). Searching the site for the additive numbers results in terrifyingly long lists of products containing these colours. For example, searching for E110 gives about 145 results.

We deserve more transparent information

It’s not easy to remember the list of additives to avoid, let alone to check every product we buy. Action on Additives will provide a handy card to carry as a reference of the additives, but better still would be for the European and UK Food Standards Agencies to take real action. If not a complete ban on these additives (and why not?) then at least a compulsory warning on the label – “This product contains additive(s) linked with hyperactivity in children”.

Related posts:

1. Bad colours: in medicines as well as foods
2. No added colours (don’t mention the flavourings, sugar, calcium carbonate, salt, glucose-fructose syrup…)

How many aphids to expect in your broccoli

US consumers are told to expect to find up to 60 aphids / thrips / mites in every 100g of frozen broccoli (but only up to 30 in frozen Brussels sprouts), up to 60 insect fragments in a 100g chocolate bar, up to 4 rodent hairs in 25g of curry powder, and a “copepod accompanied by pus pockets” in 3% of their red fish fillets. These are the specified action levels, below which there is “no inherent hazard to health”.

The FDA’s handbook The Food Defect Action Levels sets out the “levels of natural or unavoidable defects in foods that present no health hazards for humans”. It’s a stark reminder that we can’t expect any of our food to be absolutely pure and unadulterated. All food is fundamentally a natural product, however much processing it goes through before it reaches our plates. Indeed, processing may only disguise the adulteration: a maggot in a fresh apple is easy to spot, any maggots in a glass of apple juice or spoon of apple purée less so.

Sharing the natural world

We may think of the “natural” as representing all that is wholesome and good, but we share the natural world with every other mammal, as well as insects, fungi and bacteria. Harvesting food is a process of isolating the parts of the natural world that we like to eat, but the separation can never be absolute.

And our food remains an interesting source of nutrition to other denizens of the natural world. Keeping it good is a constant battle, as we seek to deter our competitors with chemicals (from pesticides and detergents to salt and sugar), heat, packaging and more. When food goes bad, it hasn’t suddenly flipped from one clear state to another; bad food has simply reached a level of contamination that we no longer find acceptable.

Contamination in the UK

The UK’s Food Standards Agency doesn’t appear to publish any detailed information on the acceptable degree of contamination of our food. There is, however, a realistic recognition in food law that contamination is only problematic beyond a certain level. The 1990 Food Safety Act states “food fails to comply with food safety requirements if [...] it is so contaminated (whether by extraneous matter or otherwise) that it would not be reasonable to expect it to be used for human consumption in that state”. Presumably it would be a matter for legal argument where the limits of reasonable expectation lie.

Related posts:

1. Contamination of Irish pork exposes our fragile food system

Misleading labels

Hard to argue with, maybe, but sadly far from the truth in Britain today. As recent food scares, from avian flu outbreaks to the contamination with dioxins of some Irish pork, have highlighted, we can’t take it for granted that apparently British food is made from the meat of animals raised on British farms. A result of concerns about BSE in the 1990s was the introduction of compulsory origin labelling for fresh and frozen beef, but not other meat.

Legal limitations

The problem is simple: under current laws, the origin of a food product is basically the last point of processing.

Sausages can be labelled as British if the meat was made into sausages somewhere in Britain, even if that meat were from farms in Ireland, Poland or further afield. But most people, reasonably enough, understand “made in the UK” to suggest that the ingredients (at least the principal ingredients) come from UK farms.

The law, as the Food Standards Agency’s chief scientist, Andrew Wadge, recently pointed out on his instructive blog, only requires that origin be specified if consumers might otherwise be misled. His example is of packaging showing the Eiffel Tower: if the product weren’t French then this would be misleading.

The nub of the problem is the lack of precision in this requirement – what’s clear to some may still be misleading to many. An ICM opinion poll, commissioned by the Conservative Party, bears this out with the finding that 51% of consumers think a sausage “produced in the UK” contains only meat from UK farms.

The British authorities seem very generous to food manufacturers and retailers when it comes to assessing what’s misleading, while other countries are – or would like to be – more exacting.

Pictures of the Eiffel Tower are one thing, but the Spanish Government declared in 2003 that all canned asparagus should be labelled with its country of origin as consumers might reasonably expect it to be Spanish and would otherwise be misled. Significantly, the European Commission didn’t oppose this decree, though it responded negatively to an Irish proposal to extend compulsory country of origin labelling to all meat.

Gallery of shame

Tory researchers have compiled a selection of case studies (pdf) of labelling they’ve identified as misleading, from Birdseye’s “Great British Menu” chicken dinner (made in the Republic of Ireland from imported chicken) to Tesco’s bacon chops (declared “produce of Britain” though the pork could be from Holland, Denmark, Ireland or Britain). Other examples are of information that’s so vague as to be useless, such as Sainsbury’s roast chicken slices (made of “Brazilian or British chicken”).

More upmarket brands and retailers aren’t blameless either: Marks and Spencer’s “nation’s favourites” corned beef roll is emblazoned with a union jack even though the beef is from Brazil.

Strong support

The Honest Food campaign is welcome political recognition of the lack of transparency in the food system and deserves support. It already has the public backing of several celebrity chefs and food campaigners, including Prue Leith and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. More significantly, it’s won the support of farming and animal welfare organisations from Compassion in World Farming and the RSPCA to the NFU and the British Poultry Council.

Notable by their absence in the list of supporters are any food manufacturers, retailers or their representative organisations. I wonder why.

Oh, there’s a silly video clip promoting the campaign too:

Related posts:

1. Clarissa Dickson Wright joins the Tories (in calling for honest food labelling)
2. Contamination of Irish pork exposes our fragile food system
3. Why does it matter where our food is from?

This graph – one of many intriguing graphic displays of the data of our food in the Cabinet Office Strategy Unit’s analytical report on its recent study of food – charts the striking changes in when we eat between 1961 and 2001.

What’s supper?

50 years ago the nation was eating four distinct meals a day, at pretty definite times of day – breakfast between 7am and 8.30am, lunch between noon and 1.30pm, tea / dinner between 4.30pm and 6.30pm, and supper around 10pm.

Today, British mealtimes are all slightly later, less distinctly identifiable and spread over a longer period of time. The fourth meal of the day, a supper just before bed, has almost completely vanished, replaced by a steady grazing throughout the evening.

(A letter in Saturday’s Guardian questioned whether anyone other than David Cameron still uses the word supper. It looks as though the meal may have fallen from favour before the word, though I’m still happy to follow the OED’s definition of “the last meal of the day”, whenever that might be.)

Breakfast? Anyone?

Examining the detail of the chart confirms other trends. Breakfast used to be a clearly defined and generally eaten meal, with over 80% of the population having eaten by 9am. Only around 60% of us have eaten anything by noon today.

It’s remarkable just how few of us are eating at any one time. In 1961 almost a third of the country was eating lunch at 12.30pm. Now, no more than 15% of us are simultaneously eating at any time of day. 6.30pm is the most popular time to eat in 2001.

From dining tables to water coolers

Of course, much of this confirms much discussed trends: the decline of mealtimes, the rise of snacking and meals eaten on the hoof. The decline in family meals is a perennial source of concern and subject of news stories. Still, the extent of the change is surprising: the rhythm of the day’s mealtimes is being replaced by a continuous pattern of national consumption.

(The Cabinet Office report gives The changing practice of eating: evidence from UK time diaries, 1975 and 2000 by Cheng et al as the primary source of this data.)

Further reading: The Food Timeline draws on a variety of historical accounts for a detailed and fascinating survey of eating times from Ancient Greece to the present day.

No related posts.

The UK government is at last waking from its long complacent slumbers and asking serious questions about food security. After enjoying an abundant supply of ever cheaper food for the last five decades, the developed world may at last be beginning to realise that we can’t take the essentials of life for granted indefinitely.

Tim Lang, professor of food policy at City University, has long been warning that we are “sleepwalking into a crisis”. Is it possible that we’re waking up in time to find another path?

A rash of reports

After years of waiting for a decent government report on the food system, three come along at once.

Following last week’s Cabinet Office publication of the most important policy statement on food for decades and a Treasury report on global commodities (mostly focusing on food and energy), Hilary Benn (Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) yesterday released a Defra discussion paper on food security.

Recognising the issues

While Tim Lang talks about “a new era”, even the government is openly raising questions of:

unforeseen disruptions
(Defra)

instability and uncertainty
(HM Treasury)

long-term challenges for world food security
(Cabinet Office)

The Cabinet Office even admits

we are still a long way from having an environmentally sustainable food chain

and

none of [agriculture's emissions and use of resources] is sustainable in the long term

Change to the food system is inevitable and it’s imperative that we do whatever we can to change it for the better.

UK Self-sufficiency

The Defra paper pulls together some revealing figures on the UK’s ability to feed itself. Our current self-sufficiency ratio is currently around 60%, meaning that 60% of the food we eat is produced in the United Kingdom, following steady decline from a peak of 80% in the mid 1980s.

UK Self-sufficiency ratio (Defra) Enlarge

Self-sufficiency in the 1980s was higher than at any time since the early 19th century, representing the peak of post-war agricultural intensification. The nadir of British food production was between the World Wars, when as little as 30% of our food was home grown and Britain relied on its empire to feed it.

Britain was last 100% self-sufficient, or as near as makes no odds, over 250 years ago, when our diets were limited to what we could produce and global trade was almost non-existent. Current food imports are only in part driven by our taste for a diet beyond the temperate produce of these islands. We only produce 80% of the temperate produce we consume.

The benefits of trade

There are powerful arguments for some international trade in food, and not just the exceptionally varied diet we enjoy with barely a thought for the intricacy of the mechanisms that put tea, bananas and tuna on our plates.

The economic law of comparative advantage tells us that all should be better off if we specialise our production and trade. Food security must be considered a global issue and we have to share the world’s production if we’re all to have enough to eat. On the other hand, some trade is simply a profligate waste of resources or a shameful transfer from the poor to the wealthy.

Trade can also bring resilience to our systems of food supply, allowing the movement of food to alleviate unexpected local shortages through severe weather, crop failure or animal disease.

Not just local or global, but sustainable, resilient and equitable

Rather than wasting our time on a polarised argument (local v global), we should be attempting to answer the very difficult question of what constitutes a sustainable, resilient and equitable balance between universally advantageous trade and appropriate local production.

UK Food imports by country (Defra) Enlarge

Where does our food come from?

Defra is proud to tell us that no more than 13% of our imports come from a single country, avoiding too much fragile dependence. The majority of imports come from the countries closest to us and are more to do with production techniques and history than extending our diet beyond the confines of our temperate climate.

Our principal supplier is the Netherlands, a country that recognised early two opportunities that now underpin much of our food supply: the advantage of glasshouse production of fruit and vegetables to produce consistent crops through an extended season; and the opportunity to use cheap global grain supplies to produce higher value meat, particularly pigs and poultry. Both types of production are heavily dependent on energy inputs.

A role for communities

The Cabinet Office paper acknowledged that:

community groups, voluntary organisations and social enterprises have an important role to play in supporting activities that promote healthy eating and more sustainable production and consumption, and in encouraging public debate about food issues, and thus in promoting new social norms that facilitate behavioural and cultural change

However, there’s nothing about community, co-operative or domestic action in the Defra paper, which recognises deep-rooted problems with the modern food system without countenancing any truly radical possible solutions, such as those discussed in the recent Growing Food for London conference.

Be consulted

Defra has published this as a consultation paper and is inviting feedback, before issuing a final policy statement on food security later this year. Read the full food security discussion paper and have your say on this critical issue.

Read more…

• Ensuring the UK’s Food Security in a Changing World, Defra’s food security discussion paper
• Patrick Holden of the Soil Association responds to the Defra discussion paper

Related posts:

1. “A grave problem”: world leaders to address food security
2. G8 agriculture summit on food security: a round-up
3. Food: the destiny of our nation

The destiny of nations depends on the manner in which they feed themselves.
(Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, The Physiology of Taste)

This unlikely quote is one of three that open the new Cabinet Office report on food policy, Food Matters: Towards a strategy for the 21st century. Less surprising, is the dropping of a fourth quote that found its way into the earlier analytical report:

I’ll bet what motivated the British to colonize so much of the world is that they were just looking for a decent meal.
(attributed Martha Harrison)

Taking food seriously

Tim Lang stated in his keynote speech to the recent Growing Food for London conference that we’re now living in “the most dangerous … but potentially the most interesting time for food policy”. True enough, the British and other governments are now recognising that we can no longer take for granted a stable global supply of cheap food.

Just a glance at the report’s chart of the price changes in major foods since 2000 is enough to convince anyone these are extraordinary times for the global food system. And desperate times for those already spending a significant proportion of their income on food. In the UK, where just 9% of average household spending is on food, most of us are lucky enough to enjoy plenty of leeway before rising prices make us hungry.

More than just leftovers

As Felicity Lawrence notes in the Guardian, the cabinet office report is a serious document that was only trivialised by Gordon Brown’s launching it by talking about eating up our leftovers.

The report makes some striking acknowledgements of the problems with the food system:

• its dependence on increasingly scarce and expensive resources
• its enormous emissions of greenhouse gases
• the social inequalities in what and how we eat
• the health impact of our diets

Out of this list, the Number 10 spin doctors chose to highlight an issue, waste, and more particularly household leftovers, that while undeniably important was always the one most open to ridicule.

The Prime Minister’s lavish 18 course meal (or was it just 8, or as many as 19?) with his fellow world leaders only made his talk of leftovers appear even more ridiculous and patronising.

More to digest

There’s a lot more to consider in this report, and we can only hope that these critical issues are aired and debated once the 18 empty plates and leftovers are just a memory. Expect more from the Tracing Paper at least…

Related posts:

1. Waking up to food security