Government must develop a joined-up strategy to change the UK’s unhealthy and environmentally damaging food system, the Commons Environmental Audit Committee has warned, highlighting that the UK lacks the basic science base to deliver more sustainable food production practices.
In its Sustainable Food report the committee warned that relying on the market to identify and direct where research is needed is likely to fail. “The government must take a more active role in directing research to ensure we have the science base to deliver food security and sustainability,” the MPs recommended. “It must be prepared to intervene with universities, colleges and the research councils to develop incentives for them to train more agricultural and food scientists… It must also take a more active role in directing the Technology Strategy Board and the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board to focus research on sustainable food production.”
The committee also recommended food skills such as cooking and gardening form part of the curriculum in all schools, that stricter advertising limits protect youngsters from junk-food marketing even on the internet and that new national planning policy guidance for local authorities should be introduced to ensure communities have access to healthy food and land to grow their own produce. It also recommended that the Office of Fair Trading’s remit should be altered so that supermarkets can co-operate in developing shared sustainability good practice.
Joan Walley MP, chair of the committee, said: “Our food system is failing. Obesity and diet-related illness is on the increase, fewer young people are being taught how to cook or grow food, and advertisers are targeting kids with junk food ads on the internet.
"At the same time the world faces growing fears about food security as the global population increases, more people eat meat and dairy, and the climate destabilises as a result of forest destruction and fossil fuel use.
"Government is understandably sceptical about anything that seems like nanny-statism, but the evidence is clear - intervention is needed to tackle obesity and fix our food system.”
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