I am sufficiently ancient to wonder sometimes if modern political parties might have a collective memory problem. The last Tory government was bombarded by food crises for a decade – remember salmonella and BSE? It mismanaged these spectacularly at times. Labour's response was to set up the Food Standards Agency (FSA), designed to "create blue water between us and safety difficulties", as one minister told me in 1998. The FSA opened in 2000 and, despite ups and downs, it has performed well, winning trust and irritating and offending all sides equally.
The new government has now decided to dismember the FSA. Its role as public health adviser on nutrition is to be absorbed into the department of health; its role as inspector of farms, food processing plants and so on will revert to Defra. The much diminished FSA will only enforce food safety and hygiene – the least controversial aspect of its current remit. Even the industry agrees such a role is needed.
Even before this dismemberment, what the FSA could achieve was limited. In particular, it was not able to consider the impact on the broader environment – cultural or ecological – when making recommendations to the public about food. The FSA lacked capacity to deal with the environmental implications of defining a sustainable diet, for example. Take the question, should I eat fish? Nutritionists say yes; fish stock analysts say no. To answer that question required the FSA to integrate ecological into nutritional advice. It fudged that one.
The last government had – belatedly – recognised this weakness and was trying to steer the FSA to be lead body on creating integrated advice to consumers. The coalition is ditching this idea. It now would need to turn to three bodies even to start talking to itself!
This matters. Take meat and dairy. They account for a huge proportion of consumers' food footprint. So should the UK cut its meat and dairy consumption? Yes, say health experts and environmentalists; no, say industry interests. Which is it to be? And if we were to cut consumption, where would this leave the upland farmers? Health secretary Andrew Lansley's recent speech to the Faculty of Public Health reiterated the mantra of pursuing "evidence-based policy". Quite right, but what if evidence competes? If the UK is to meet its legal obligations to meet climate change emission targets, this has to be addressed.
Our food system faces huge challenges. Crises loom on the local, national, EU and global level. Not just climate change, or the problems of water, energy, soil management, biodiversity loss and land use competition, but pressing social issues such as labour and skills shortages, food quality problems and price. The pursuit of cheaper food underestimates real costs. Who pays for climate change? Is the real cost of the good water going into that Kenyan green bean included in your checkout bill? And why is it easier to quench your thirst with a sugary soft drink than in a public, free water fountain?
So far there is no sign that the coalition's food policy will address such questions. Lansley has made forays into the territory, first in a regrettable remark attacking Jamie Oliver, and then by suggesting the food industry might like to take over funding of the Change4Life programme, part of an anti-obesity cross-government scheme on whose expert advisory group I sit. Such forays are ideological, not evidence-based. Tackling obesity is like tackling climate change. It requires system change, and cannot be reduced to individual choice.
The good news is that the coalition hasn't so far ditched Defra's Food 2030 strategy, launched in January. Two years in the making, Food 2030 was deceptively simple. It proposed a set of goals for UK food: low carbon, healthy, ethical, affordable. In short, sustainable. This was government at last setting a framework, not just saying "leave it to Tesco".
In opposition, the new coalition partners said: "Fine, but where's the delivery?" And they were right. We desperately need to push the food system in the direction Food 2030 mapped. We can't go on eating as we are – destructive choices (eating more food that has been flown thousands of miles, for example) need to be edited out, and only governments can set the framework. It will require tougher and clearer land use policies. It will require government to be honest with consumers that prices are likely to rise, not least since oil prices are again rising. Twenty-first century industrialised food turns crude oil into calories at every stage – farming's productivity gains all require oil, not just to transport food, but above all to create the fertilisers on which output depends.
A food world post peak oil will be very different. This new government must recognise that. The difficulty is breaking the news to consumers. And that's dangerous political territory.
In that context, carving up the FSA could be seen either as moving deckchairs about on the Titanic, or as clearing the decks for action. Time will tell.
Tim Lang is professor of food policy at City university
Staff
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