Government reneging on food policy plans, say experts

The UK government has abandoned promises to transform the national food system after just a year, and will struggle to meet its own targets on health, climate and nature, food system experts have said.

Writing in Nature Food, academics from the Universities of York, Sheffield, Reading and Cambridge argue that the Government’s U-turns and lack of ambition on food policy leave the nation increasingly vulnerable to rising food prices, diet-related health conditions, and a decline in biodiversity.

The academics call on the government to develop a more coherent, coordinated and collaborative approach to food policy. They propose a new five-point plan to support the UK to transition towards a more sustainable, healthier food system. Grounded in recommendations from the Dimbleby Review, as well as evidence from several UK Government funded policy research programmes, the five-point plan proposes:

• Setting up a cross-government commission that joins up population and planetary health to make policy decisions about future systems,
• A full economic analysis of the recommendations evidenced in Dimbleby’s review,
• Free school meals made available to all primary school children in England, revolutionising catering in schools,
• Integrating mandatory health and environmental metrics into the Food Data Transparency Partnership. This partnership promotes the use of data when making decisions about the production and sale of healthier and more sustainable food and drink.
• A comprehensive framework for how land should be used for food production, which would help to reverse the UK’s status as the worst-performing G7 country in terms of species depletion.

The Government’s wide-ranging 2022 Food Strategy focused on long-term measures to support a resilient, healthier, more affordable and sustainable food supply. It was a response to the recommendations set out in the previous year’s National Food Strategy Independent Review, authored by Henry Dimbleby.

Professor Carol Wagstaff, Professor of Crop Quality for Health, said: "The Dimbleby Review paved the way for the Government to devise and enact a Food Strategy that would at last underpin a food systems that could provide healthy and sustainable diets that were accessible to all UK citizens. Sadly, this opportunity has been missed and instead we have seen an increase in food poverty and a shortening of life expectancy due to the prevalence of diet-related diseases. Global events associated with conflict, climate change and the cost of living crisis have exposed the vulnerabilities in our present food system. This has resulted in farmers being unable to afford the costs of production so that the quantity of food being produced in the UK has declined, and conversely an increase in the number of people who cannot afford to eat and who are becoming more and more dependent on food aid. 

“Rescuing the UK food system by implementing our key recommendations would improve the lives of citizens, boost the economy through supporting the agri-food sector, and would make a significant contribution to preserving the health of our planet.”

In their commentary, the academics note that there has been a series of shelved government policies and reversed decisions since the 2022 Food Strategy was published, despite what they see as a collective will for change across the UK agri-food sector. Lead author Professor Bob Doherty, University of York, said: “Although the Government’s 2022 Food Strategy was not as robust as the Dimbleby Review, it was a critical step in the right direction. Just one year later, Government have reneged on their responsibility to implement change across the whole agri-food sector. We are now seeing a gradual decline in food security, diet, soil health and biodiversity. To prevent the UK falling further behind other G7 nations, we need action to tackle diet-related health, improve school meals for the 800,000 children in poverty, increase the consumption of fibre, fruit and vegetables, and to better measure the environmental impacts of food production so the UN goals on Net Zero greenhouse gas emissions can be met.

“Rather than stalling and making U-turns, if the UK Government implemented their own food strategy it would boost our agri-food sector and save the country a lot of money in terms of GDP, as well as improving the health of soil, and make a valuable and long-term contribution to human and planetary health.”