Green Party co-leader Adrian Ramsey has joined the voices criticising the food strategy unveiled by the government this week.
In a statement to the press, he said “This is not really a strategy at all - it’s junk. The failure to expand free and nutritional school meals or intervene to challenge fast and highly processed food will leave millions of children living in poverty, undernourished and in poor health”.The policy has its origins in a review of the England’s food system conducted for the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in 2018 by Henry Dimbleby, founder of restaurant chain Leon.
The National Food Strategy for England has been created in response to this review and includes ‘policy initiatives to boost health, sustainability, accessibility of diets and to secure food supply, ensuring that domestic producers and the wider food and drink industry contributes to the levelling up agenda and makes the most of post-Brexit opportunities’.
These include promoting sustainability in the food system, dealing with staff shortages in the food and hospitality industries caused by Brexit and promoting healthy eating.
In the forward to the strategy Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs George Eustice praises the commitment shown by workers in the food and agriculture sectors during the pandemic.
He goes on to say that ‘good progress’ has been made on tackling obesity through working with the food industry to reformulate products and that government policy will ‘reward’ sustainable farming practices that ‘make space for nature in the farmed landscape’.
Adrian Ramsey responded saying “A genuine strategy would offer something new on the menu - it would look to transform our food and farming sector to tackle the cost-of-living crisis, improve public health and address the climate and ecological emergency. Instead, we’ve been dished up leftovers from an era that serves Tory paymasters, especially large-scale farmers and the processed food industry”.
Speaking to the BBC Henry Dimbleby said the policy document produced by the government was not sufficiently ‘detailed’ to be described as a strategy, adding that although much of what he proposed in 2018 has been included “it hasn’t been done with one vision across the system”.
He directed specific criticism at plans for a tax on salt and sugar in processed foods had been dropped, although the government have promised that this will be addressed in a future white paper.
The strategy has also been criticised by Sue Davis of consumer group Which?, who told the BBC that it lacked ambition and that many of the proposals made had been ‘watered down’.
Environmental groups have also criticised the strategy for not living up to promises made by the government to do more to restore nature. Also speaking to the BBC WWF said the only way to “fix a broken food system and ensure healthy, affordable, and sustainable” food will be available for everyone, is to “put nature and the climate” at the heart of the food system.
Adrian Ramsey said “England and Wales have fantastic examples of regenerative and organic farming methods in action, supplying healthy and sustainable food while capturing carbon in the soil and improving biodiversity. These are the approaches that the government needs to look to in shaping a healthy, resilient and greener food and farming sector.”
The strategy unveiled by the government recognises the importance of the food and agriculture sectors to how we confront challenges around public health, the cost-of-living crisis and climate change.
Responses to it suggest though that is inspires little confidence in their ability to address these issues.