FFormer farming minister Jim Paice kicked off last week's FPJ East Anglia conference by apologising for the “chaos” around the RPA’s auditing of producer organisations during his time at DEFRA.
Paice admitted that he didn’t believe the RPA handled the EU auditing process well enough before, going on to question the success of the government’s 5 A DAY campaign.
“The overall consumption of fruit and vegetables is too low in the UK,” he said. “I don’t think the 5 A DAY marketing is working and we must work to make fresh produce more sexy to consumers.”
Paice pleaded with producers to invest more in R&D and revealed that only one per cent of turnover is currently spent on research within agriculture.
He also echoed DEFRA secretary Owen Paterson’s pro-GM stance during his presentation, explaining: “The EU is certainly failing behind by not grasping GM technology and I feel there is unbelievable hypocrisy as UK-distributed insulin and cheese both have GM-derived ingredients with no health impact.”