The government's soon-to-be published 25-year food strategy is a huge disappointment to leading food policy academic Tim Lang
The government's forthcoming 25-year Food and Farming Plan -- the first significant piece of food policy to have appeared in the UK since 2010 -- has been comprehensively dismissed by one of the country's leading food policy experts, Professor Tim Lang from the Centre for Food Policy at City University London.
Speaking at a seminar hosted by the Westminster Food and Nutrition Forum and reported by the online magazine Foodnavigator, Professor Lang praised the civil servants who had to 'make a silk purse out of a sow's ear'. But he said the policy ideas the plan was based on were narrow and inadequate, and failed to rise to the challenges of diet-elated ill health, inequality, climate change, biodiversity, population growth and land use. The plan was a missed opportunity, 'doomed to be irrelevant within five years'.
Professor Lang, a former chair of Sustain, called for less of a focus on competitiveness and 'brand Britain' and more on public health, a shift from animal-based to plant-based diets, and an increase in the share of revenues flowing back to farmers.
Read about Sustain's food and farming policies here.
Published Friday 1 April 2016
Sustain: Sustain The alliance for better food and farming advocates food and agriculture policies and practices that enhance the health and welfare of people and animals, improve the working and living environment, enrich society and culture and promote equity.
