Search results: food policy action

Yesterday’s post was about the UK’s efforts to restrict the marketing of junk foods to children.  This is part of a larger effort to establish a rational framework for improving the entire food system.

In 2020, the government published Part One of the Food Strategy Report it had commissioned from Henry Dimbleby.  The report comes with a 3-minute film explaining what it is about.

The Part One report announced a forthcoming Part Two to evaluate the current system and set recommendations, and explained its philosophical basis:

Should nanny tell us what to eat?

The already complex job of working out how to help different people in different circumstances is complicated by one of the fundamental questions of political philosophy: what role should the state play in the private lives of its citizens? Libertarians and public health campaigners have fought a running battle for years over this question. But when it comes to diet, even fierce opponents of the “nanny state” now recognize that the problem is serious enough to warrant greater state intervention….The vast majority of those we spoke to (and almost every parent) said they were fed up with being bombarded by junk food marketing and thought the state should intervene.

Henry Dimbleby’s Part Two report is now out (he described it to me in an e-mail as a “bit of a labour of love”).  Here it is: The UK’s National Food Strategy

His report is based on evidence summarized in a slide deck of 175 items.

The report’s 14 recommendations are summarized, with rationale and references, in a separate document.  Most of the recommendations deal with school feeding and and feeding programs for the poor.  Some are likely to get focused attention:

• Recommendation 1. Introduce a sugar and salt reformulation tax. Use some of the revenue to help get fresh fruit and vegetables to low income families.
• Recommendation 11. Invest £1 billion in innovation to create a better food system.
• Recommendation 13. Strengthen government procurement rules to ensure that taxpayer money is spent on healthy and sustainable food.

The first recommendation comes with its own, separate report on the impact of a tax on added sugar and salt.

The responses:

From The Guardian

The government-commissioned National Food Strategy, drawn up by the restaurateur Henry Dimbleby, says the UK population’s “malfunctioning” appetites and poor diets – fuelled by consumer and manufacturer’s reliance on processed food – place an unsustainable burden on the NHS and contribute to 64,000 deaths each year.

Its most eye-catching recommendation is a levy of £3 a kilo on sugar and £6 a kilo on salt sold wholesale for use in processed food, restaurants and catering, which it says would be a world first. This would raise up to £3.4bn a year, some of which should fund an expansion of free schools meals to an extra 1.1 million children and an overhaul of itain’s food and cooking culture… Dimbleby believes the tax would incentivise manufacturers to reduce salt and sugar levels by reformulating products.

From FoodNavigator.com: From taxing salt and sugar to reducing animal proteins: The controversial proposals in the UK’s National Food Strategy paper.  In 2019 the UK government commissioned a review of the country’s food system. Today, the results are in – and the far-reaching paper includes some controversial recommendations…. Read more  [note: This has a good summary of the 14 recommendations].

From FoodManufacture.com

• National Food Strategy Part 2: sugar and salt tax plans: The National Food Strategy Part 2 has been published, revealing proposals for a sugar and salt tax on all processed products, except ingredients for home cooking, and on foods sold through foodservice channels…. Read more
• National Food Strategy Part 2: reactions: The National Food Strategy Part 2 has provoked mixed reactions, with big grocery retailers backing calls for mandatory reporting of key information, while others have criticised sugar and salt tax proposals…. Read more

And for a broad look at what’s happening in UK food policy, see: Testing Times for UK Food Policy: Nine principles and Tests, by Tim Lang, Erik Millstone, Terry Marsden.  This deals with holding governments accountable.

The Discussion Paper examines the state of post-EU UK food security and policy. It applies a multi-criteria approach, seeing food not as a matter that can be reduced to one overarching goal – cheapness, say, or supermarket availability – but as an issue on which public policy has to weigh up and include several equally worthy and evidence-based concerns. The report offers an approach to ensuring UK food security in the years ahead. It offers nine public-interest Principles which should guide future food policy. These propose that it is possible to capture a consensus on the need for change and what it entails. Each Principle leads to a Test that the UK public and policy-makers could apply to any policy proposals for the food system that emanate from Government in coming months.

Tim Lang’s book, Feeding Britain, is essential reading to understand what’s happening—and not happening—in the UK.

The UK government is thinking and acting on food policy issues.  If only ours did too.

Yesterday, I posted information about the forthcoming UN Summit on Food Systems (UNFSS) and its Pre-Summit.  The Summit has been heavily criticized on the grounds that it:

• Sets agenda themes determined by corporate entities such as The World Economic Forum and the Gates Foundation.
• Favors corporate technological solutions to food system problems.
• Ignores agroecology, organic farming, and indigenous knowledge.
• Excludes meaningful representation from people most affected by food system transformation.
• Promotes corporate control of food systems.
• Ignores the conflicted interests of its organizers.
• Is fundamentally undemocratic.

These criticisms are so severe that The Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples’ Mechanism for Relations with the UN (CSM) is organizing counter events July 25 to July 27.

• Download and share this call to action
• Learn more about CSM’s position as regards the UN Food Systems Summit

Much has been written to document such concerns.

Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples Mechanism, North America: UN Food System Summit “Dialogue” events spark renewed concerns of corporate capture in North American food system and rural economies globally

In March 2020, 550 civil society organizations sent an open letter to the United Nations (UN) Secretary-General condemning the involvement of the World Economic Forum in the UNFSS, the appointment of Ms. Agnes Kalibata as UNFSS Special Envoy due to her links to corporate agribusiness, the failure of the UNFSS to elevate the primacy and indivisibility of human rights frameworks as foundational to the governance of food systems, and the necessity of civil society organizations to have an autonomous, self-organized, and equal ‘seat at the table.’ These concerns have not been addressed despite numerous CSM interactions with UNFSS organizers.

The International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES): An IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] for Food?”  How the UN Food Systems Summit is being used to advance a problematic new science-policy agenda.

Behind what sounds like a technocratic question is in fact a high-stakes battle over different visions of what constitutes legitimate science and relevant knowledge for food systems. This, in turn, is part of a broader battle over what food systems should look like and who should govern them.

Matthew Canfield, Molly D. Anderson and Philip McMichael.  UN Food Systems Summit 2021: Dismantling Democracy and Resetting Corporate Control of Food Systems.  Front. Sustain. Food Syst., 13 April 2021. [Note: this paper has an especially useful historical account of attempts to establish global food system governance]

Although few people will dispute that global food systems need transformation, it has become clear that the Summit is instead an effort by a powerful alliance of multinational corporations, philanthropies, and export-oriented countries to subvert multilateral institutions of food governance and capture the global narrative of “food systems transformation”…It elaborates how the current structure and forms of participant recruitment and public engagement lack basic transparency and accountability, fail to address significant conflicts of interest, and ignore human rights.

Independent scientists:  Open letter to policy makers: No new science-policy interface for food systems.

We call on governments and policymakers to…Support participatory processes that actively and meaningfully include plural perspectives and voices in food system governance. Farmers and other citizens need inclusive, participatory, and safe spaces within the CFS-HLPE process to co-create the knowledge necessary to govern food systems at global, national and local levels.

Maywa Montenegro, Matthew Canfield, and Alastair Iles.  Weaponizing Science in Global Food Policy.

Nobody disputes the need for urgent action to transform the food system. But the UNFSS has been criticized by human rights experts for its top-down and non-transparent organization. Indigenous peoples, peasants, and civil society groups around the world know their hard-won rights are under attack. Many are protesting the summit’s legitimacy and organizing counter-mobilizations.

Scientists are also contesting a summit because of its selective embrace of science, as seen in a boycott letter signed by nearly 300 academics, from Brazil to Italy to Japan.

Through the Summit, “science” has been weaponized by powerful actors not only to promote a technology-driven approach to food systems, but also to fragment global food security governance and create institutions more amenable to the demands of agribusiness.

Scientists: An open letter from scientists calling for a boycott of the 2021 Food Systems Summit.

Some critics of the UNFSS have suggested ways that the process could become less problematic: (1) it could incorporate a human rights framing into all of its “action tracks”; (2) it could create an action track led by the CSM on the corporate capture of food systems; and (3) it could designate the UN Committee on World Food Security as the institutional home to implement recommendations coming out of the summit.

Nisbett N, et al.  Equity and expertise in the UN Food Systems Summit.  BMJ Global Health. 2021;6:e006569.

…time is not late to take action in rebalancing powers and enabling a greater diversity of knowledge, not simply among a multiplicity of voices in multiple public forums, but explicitly engaged at the summit’s top table of expertise and summit leadership. It is also not late to adopt mechanisms that limit the engagement of those actors whose primary interests have driven our food systems to
become unhealthy, unsustainable and inequitable, so the voices of the people can be clearly heard..

An alternative: The Global People’s Summit on Food Systems

The People’s Summit is composed primarily of movements of landless peasants, agricultural workers, fisherfolk, indigenous people, rural women, and youth—or small food producers who produce 70% of the world’s food, yet remain among the world’s poorest and food insecure.  “The issue of landlessness and land grabbing is not on the agenda of the UNFSS.  Nowhere in its so-called Action Tracks do discussions highlight critical trends such as on land concentration and reconcentration in the hands of big agribusiness firms and their network of local landlords and compradors, nor on the massive displacement of rural communities to give way to big private investments and large development projects,” said Chennaiah Poguri, chairperson of the Asian Peasant Coalition (APC).

Additions

• Video explaining “multistakeholderism”
• Links (ongoing) to papers on the UN Food System Summit

A notice to journalists reminds me that it’s time to talk about the UN Summit on Food Systems, scheduled for September.  The notice is about the forthcoming Pre-Summit in Rome:

WHEN: The Pre-Summit will take place from Monday, July 26 to Wednesday, July 28.

The tentative programme is available online and virtual media briefings will take place daily. To be able to attend, journalists can register for accreditation here.

WHERE: The Food Systems Pre-Summit is being held in Rome under the leadership of the UN Secretary-General and in partnership with the Government of Italy. A series of affiliated events will take place alongside the Pre-Summit.

WHO: A few of the high-level speakers and delegates expected to participate include:

• Mario Draghi, Prime Minister of Italy
• Katrin Jakobsdottir, Prime Minister of Iceland
• António Guterres, UN Secretary-General
• Amina Mohammed, UN Deputy Secretary-General
• Agnes Kalibata, UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for the 2021 Food Systems Summit
• María Juliana Ruiz, First Lady of Colombia

WHY: Ahead of the UN Food Systems Summit, which will take place in September 2021 in New York, the three-day gathering aims to deliver the latest evidence-based and scientific approaches from around the world, launch a set of new commitments through coalitions of action and mobilize new financing and partnerships.

The event will bring together youth, farmers, Indigenous Peoples, civil society, researchers, the private sector, policy leaders and ministers of agriculture, environment, health, nutrition and finance, among other players. More than 70 ministers and commissioners of Member States and the EU are confirmed to participate.

Previous UN press releases explain the preparation for the Pre-Summit and the Summit itself.

January 27: The five action tracks

• Action Track 1: Ensure access to safe and nutritious food for all
• Action Track 2: Shift to sustainable consumption patterns
• Action Track 3: Boost nature-positive production
• Action Track 4: Advance equitable livelihoods
• Action Track 5: Build resilience to vulnerabilities, shocks and stress

April 26: More than 100 countries sign on to develop ways to transform food systems to meet the Sustainable Development Goals.

June 9: the UN announces the results of more than 100 Independent Dialogues on food system transformation.

Independent Dialogues, convened by any interested group on any topic, are one of three main components of the Summit Dialogues along with government-led Member State Dialogues and thematic Global Dialogues. More than 10,000 people took part in the independent sessions that submitted feedback to the Summit by the end of May. Among the 10 common themes that emerged in a new synthesis report published today were diversity, equity, transparency, the need to shift perspectives, and the need to adapt solutions to local contexts.

June 25: the UN announces solutions to problems of food system transformation:

The solutions, published on the online Summit Community, are an extensive menu of possible actions expected to support Member States as they work through national pathways for food systems transformation…The solutions were refined from more than 2,000 ideas proposed during 18 months of dialogues, surveys and open fora with Indigenous Peoples, youth, producers, researchers, NGOs and governments, and represent key areas to address some of the world’s most pressing issues, from hunger and poverty to climate change. Among the game-changing solutions are initiatives to reimagine school meals programmes as well as proposals to include the cost of a healthy diet when calculating poverty lines.

The UN has also issued position papers defining:

• Food Systems
• Healthy Diets

And it has an FAQ on the Summit.

All of this sounds thrilling, useful, and much needed, but is it?  What’s really going on here?

Tomorrow: The critique—Corporate control of the Summit agenda.

The Rudd Center at the University of Connecticut issued a press release for its latest report on fast food marketing:

New Study Finds Fast-Food Companies Spending More on Advertising, Disproportionately Targeting Black and Latino Youth

The fast-food industry spent $5 billion on advertising in 2019, and the advertisements disproportionately targeted Black and Latino youth, according to new research published today by the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at the University of Connecticut. The new report, Fast Food FACTS 2021, finds that the industry’s annual ad spending in 2019 increased by over $400 million since 2012, and that children and teens were viewing on average more than two fast food TV ads per day.

The report provides details on spending amounts.

It also breaks spending down by target:

And it gives many examples of the ways fast food companies market to kids:

Isn’t it time to put a stop to this?

The report offers suggestions for voluntary actions, but that seems like a waste of time; companies are not going to voluntarily stop marketing to kids.  Way too much money is involved.

The Rudd Center also has lots of recommendations.

I’d start with this one:

The U.S. federal government should eliminate unhealthy food and beverage marketing to children as a tax-deductible corporate expense.

As I mentioned yesterday, everyone seems to be doing reports on food systems—a deluge.  Here are the most recent ones I’ve collected.

Food and Water Watch: Well-Fed:  A Roadmap To A Sustainable Food System That Works For All

The report outlines the alarming degree of corporate consolidation in the food industry and its impact on consumers and small farms. For example:

• 83 percent of all beef is produced by just four processing companies;
• 65 percent of consumer grocery market share is held by just four retailers; and
• 67 percent of crop seed market share is held by just four corporations.

Global Alliance for the Future of Food: Beacons of Hope: Stories of Food Systems Transformation During COVID-19

Building on a program of work launched in 2019 — “Beacons of Hope: Stories of
Transformation” — this short report shares stories of food systems initiatives and the
people who responded to the COVID-19 pandemic with creativity, adaptability, and resilience.

Global Alliance for the Future of Food:  How to Transform Food Systems: 7 Calls to Action

The Global Alliance advocates for increased systems-based research into the future of food and positive food environments that are adapted to meet regional conditions and cultural contexts. We also call for transformed governance and decision-making, with additional investment and support for agroecology and regenerative approaches, and excluding harmful subsidies and incentives.

World Resources Institute: Food Systems at Risk: Transformative Adaptation for Long-Term Food Security

Food security, people, climate. These three words are inextricably linked; changes to one will inevitably affect the others. As climate change threatens food-producing regions, what changes are needed to feed a growing population? How can we shift food systems to better adapt to the changing climate? More explicitly, how can policymakers help hundreds of millions of small-scale agricultural producers to enhance food security and improve livelihoods despite the challenges that climate change brings?

OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development): Agricultural Policy Monitoring and Evaluation 2021: Addressing the Challenges Facing Food Systems

NutraIngredients.com had an intriguing (to me, at least) article about the latest complaints about FDA’s lack of action on GRAS ingredients—those Generally Recognized As Safe.

A recent paper claims FDA is in the dark as to how many new ingredients have come onto the market via the GRAS process. Only limited progress has been made in the decade since a Congressional report first raised the issue and directed the Agency to make changes, the authors found.”

The article referred to a this paper, Ten years post-GAO assessment, FDA remains uninformed of potentially harmful GRAS substances in foods.

The starting point for this paper is a study done by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) ten years ago: FDA Should Strengthen Its Oversight of Food Ingredients Determined to be Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS)

The new paper argues that ten years later, the FDA has done little to address the GAO’s concerns.

Since 2010, FDA has addressed only a few of the criticisms regarding its process for establishing a food substance as GRAS. …most critically, FDA has chosen to remain uninformed about food substances self-determined as GRAS by manufacturers…FDA cannot fulfill its statutory obligation for ensuring the chemical safety of the U.S. food supply if it does not know which substances, in which quantities, have been added to foods.

This took me right back to a blog post I did in 2016: The FDA’s unfortunate ruling on GRAS regulations.

Thanks to Sinead Boylan in Australia for alerting me to this paper about the influence of the meat and dairy industries on climate change policy.  The authors are Environmental Science colleagues at NYU.

The Study: The climate responsibilities of industrial meat and dairy producers.  Oliver Lazarus & Sonali McDermid & Jennifer Jacquet.  Climatic Change (2021) 165:30.

Method: The authors examined the role of 35 of the world’s largest meat and dairy companies in actions related to preventing climate change. But in particular, it investigated “the transparency of emissions reporting, mitigation commitments, and influence on public opinion and politics of the 10 US meat and dairy companies.”

Its overall conclusion: “all 10 US companies have contributed to efforts to undermine climate-related policies.”

Through a questionnaire, it found (these are direct quotes):

• All 10 US companies have contributed to research that minimizes the link between animal agriculture and climate change (Q11). Three companies—Tyson, Cargill, and Smithfield—have contributed directly to what Brulle (2014) called “climate change countermovement organizations” or organizations that have minimized the link between agriculture and climate change (Q13).
• Four companies—Tyson, National Beef, Smithfield, and Hormel—have each made statements linking climate change regulation with potentially harming their profitability, either in an SEC form or in an annual report (Q17…).

Through researching OpenSecrets

• Nine of the 10 companies have spent at least $600,000 on lobbying activities since 2000, with five of those companies spending over $14 million each…Tyson has spent the most on lobbying—$25 million—over the last two decades.
• Cargill has spent $21.5 million; Smithfield Foods, $21 million; Dean Foods, $16 million; and Dairy Farmers of America, $14 million….
• Combined, the companies have spent a total of $109 million on lobbying activities since 2000.
• The other nine US-based companies [the tenth, Koch Foods, did not report] have spent a combined $26 million on political campaigns since 2000.
• Dairy Farmers of America has spent the most, at $6.3 million since 2000. California Dairies has spent $5 million; Dean Foods, $4.3 million; Cargill, $4 million; and Tyson, $3.2 million.
• Since 2000, Tyson has spent more on Republican candidates in every election cycle but one, and a similar pattern was observed for most of the companies examined here.
• US meat and dairy companies act collectively…Together, six of these [trade] groups—the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, the National Pork Producers Council, the North American Meat Institute, the National Chicken Council, the International Dairy Foods Association, and the combined expenses of the American Farm Bureau Federation and its state groups—have spent nearly $200 million in lobbying since 2000, lobbying yearly on climate related issues like cap-and-trade, the Clean Air Act, and greenhouse gas regulations and reporting rules.
• A recent sustainability report published by the US pork industry noted that “pork production contributes just 0.46% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere” (Pork Checkoff 2020).
• In 2019, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association published a 21-part series, “Tough Questions About Beef Sustainability,” that, among other things, claims US beef production accounted for just 1.9% of total US emissions in 2014 (Beef Research 2019)

Their analysis also suggests: “the level of influence generally corresponded with emissions. Tyson, for example, is the largest emitter of the 10 US companies.  Tyson received the highest total influence score in response to our 20 questions at 15, tied with National Beef Packing Company, the fourth highest emitter.”

Overall: “In the case of the USA, our analysis provides evidence to suggest that the 10 largest meat and dairy companies have worked to frame the conversation, influence climate-related policies, and minimize the link between animal agriculture and climate change.”

Comment: This issue matters because animal agriculture is estimated to contribute 14.5% of greenhouse gas emissions.  This, and industry behavior around this issue, is a reason why sustainability needs to be part of Dietary Guidelines, and “eat less meat” is good dietary advice for people in industrialized economies.

Katie S. Martin.  Reinventing Food Banks and Pantries: New Tools to End Hunger.  Island Press, 2021.

After Janet Poppendieck’s Sweet Charity?, and Andy Fisher’s Big Hunger, I didn’t think there was anything new to say about private charitable food handouts in the U.S., but this book surprised me.

Reinventing is a how-to manual for people working in the food banking and food pantry system.  Katie Martin’s goal is to make this system more dignified, healthier, and politically focused for participants.

Martin recognizes that a volunteer-run system for distributing charitable food is unsustainable.  She wrote this book to encourage longer term solutions to food and nutrition insecurity.

What if our success is measured not simply by the pounds of food we distribute but by the reduction in people who need our services?  Or the number of people who are connected to additional services?  Or the number of people who make fewer trade-off decisions between paying for food, rent, or medicine.  Or the number of people who have improved health outcomes based on the food and services they receive? (p. 26)

The book provides step-by-step guides to talking about hunger in policy rather than individual terms, to making food pantries more hospitable and better connected to social resources, to providing participants with choices, to training volunteers, to evaluating how programs work, and to dealing with systems change.

Every chapter ends with actions steps and encouragement to take one step, make one change.

Yes!