E. International strategies
Canada
1.1In 2019, the Canadian Government released its Food Policy for Canada: Everyone at the Table. The aim of the policy was to ‘build a healthier and more sustainable food system’. It noted that ‘food systems, including the way food is produced, processed, distributed, consumed, and disposed of, have direct impacts on the lives of Canadians’; and observed that ‘food systems are interconnected and are integral to the wellbeing of communities, including northern and Indigenous communities, public health, environmental sustainability, and the strength of the economy’.
1.2The policy consists of:
- A vision
- Priority Outcomes
- Action areas
- Guiding principles.
- The policy’s vision is that:
All people in Canada are able to access a sufficient amount of safe, nutritious, and culturally diverse food. Canada’s food system is resilient and innovative, sustains our environment and supports our economy.
1.4The six ‘long-term interconnected and mutually-reinforcing’ outcomes identified by the policy were:
- Vibrant communities—improving community capacity and resilience to meet food-related challenges.
- Increased connections within food systems—including through governance spaces and partnerships that connect multiple sectors and actors across the food system.
- Improved food-related health outcomes—improving diet related health and reducing the burden of diet-related disease, particularly among groups at higher risk of food insecurity.
- Strong Indigenous food systems—partnering with Indigenous communities and organizations to support strong and prosperous First Nations, Inuit and Métis food systems.
- Sustainable food practices—improving practices along the food value chain to reduce environmental impact and improve the climate resilience.
- Inclusive economic growth—creating a diversified, economically viable, and sustainable food system, with improved access to opportunities in the agriculture and food sector for all Canadians.
- Four action areas were identified requiring action in the short and medium terms to support long-term outcomes. These were:
- Helping Canadian communities access healthy food—with a focus on community-based initiatives with potential to provide social, health, environmental and economic benefits.
- Making Canadian food the top choice at home and abroad—with efforts to diversify exports, support food processors, and enhance the potential of Canadian agriculture and food products to stand out as safe and healthy in domestic and international markets.
- Supporting food security in Northern and Indigenous communities—strengthening First Nations, Inuit, and Métis food systems, recognizing the importance of food to Indigenous culture and well-being, and, in so doing, supporting Indigenous food self-determination.
- Reducing food waste—with a shift towards more sustainable food practices across the processing, retail and food services sector and within government.
- The guiding principles of the Food Policy are intended to provide direction and guidance for action on food related issues. The principles are:
- Inclusion and diversity—all Canadians to be part of an ongoing dialogue on food issues, with decisions being made after gathering and considering diverse interests and perspectives.
- Reconciliation—acknowledging the distinct food systems of First Nations, Inuit and Métis communities in Canada, ensuring their rights, interests and circumstances are acknowledged, affirmed and implemented and supporting food self-determination.
- Collaboration—improving integration across food-related policies and programs.
- Innovation—creating a food system that encourages innovation and is adaptable as priorities shift.
- Sustainability—a food system that supports social, cultural, environmental and economic sustainability.
- Evidence and accountability—ensuring that food-related policies and programs are evidence-based, transparent, accountable and results oriented.
- The Food Policy for Canada is supported by the Canadian Food Policy Advisory Council. The Council was created to ensure collaboration in understanding complex and interconnected food systems issues from diverse perspectives. It provides advice to the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food on addressing challenges and opportunities across Canada’s food systems. Its membership is designed to reflect the diversity of Canada’s food systems including from the food and agriculture sector, academia, civil society, and Indigenous communities. The Council will contribute to building consensus and greater trust across food-system stakeholders, identify gaps in data and opportunities, provide advice on future action areas and assist in the development of specific and measurable targets for each of the long-term outcomes.
- In addition, a cross-government reporting framework will measure and track progress towards outcomes, ‘holding the government accountable for results and ensuring transparent reporting to Canadians’. It will also support evidence-based decision-making for tackling food system issues.
UK food strategy
1.9The UK Government food strategy, presented to the UK Parliament in June 2022, was a response to a process begun in 2018 with the establishment of the independent review of the UK food system. The review submitted two reports—The National Food Strategy: Part One (July 2020) and The National Food Strategy: The Plan (July 2021). Part One made seven recommendations around two main themes—addressing disadvantage and maintaining food sovereignty. The recommendations included:
- Expand eligibility for the Free School Meal scheme to include every child (up to the age of 16) from a household where the parent or guardian is in receipt of Universal Credit (or equivalent benefits).
- Extend the Holiday Activity and Food Programme to all areas in England, so that summer holiday support is available to all children in receipt of Free School Meals.
- Increase the value of Healthy Start vouchers to £4.25 per week; and expand the scheme to pregnant woman and to all households with children under 4 in both cases where the parent or guardian is in receipt of Universal Credit (or equivalent benefits).
- Extend the work of the Food to the Vulnerable Ministerial Task Force for a further 12 months up until July 2021. It should collect, assess and monitor data on the number of people suffering from food insecurity at any time, and agree cross-departmental actions, where necessary, to support those who cannot access or afford food.
- The government should only agree to cut tariffs in new trade deals on products which meet our core standards.
- The government should adopt a statutory responsibility to commission and publish an independent report on any proposed trade agreements.
- The government should adopt a statutory duty to give Parliament the time and opportunity to properly scrutinise any new trade deal.
- The Plan (2021) made fourteen recommendations around four themes. The first theme was ‘escape the junk food cycle and protect the National Health Service’. Under this theme it was recommended that the government:
- Introduce a Sugar and Salt Reformulation Tax and use some of the revenue to help get fresh fruit and vegetables to low-income families.
- Introduce mandatory reporting for large food companies.
- Launch a new “Eat and Learn” initiative for schools.
- These recommendations were designed to ensure reductions in sugar and salt in processed foods; mandatory reporting of food sales by type and nutrient content and waste; education in food and food preparation skills.
- The second theme was ‘reduce diet-related inequality’. Under this theme it was recommended that the government:
- Extend eligibility for free school meals.
- Fund the Holiday Activities and Food programme for the next three years.
- Expand the Healthy Start scheme.
- Trial a “Community Eatwell” programme, supporting those on low incomes to improve their diets.
- These recommendations target disadvantaged children, both before and during their school years and outside school, including pregnant mothers. The Community Eatwell program would give General Practitioners ‘the option to prescribe fruit and vegetables – along with food-related education and social support – to patients suffering the effects of poor diet or food insecurity’.
- The third theme was ‘make the best use of our land’. Under this theme it was recommended that the government:
- Guarantee the budget for agricultural payments until at least 2029 to help farmers transition to more sustainable land use.
- Create a Rural Land Use Framework based on the three-compartment model.
- Define minimum standards for trade and a mechanism for protecting them.
- These recommendations were designed to assist the transition from subsidies under the European Union Common Agricultural Policy to Environmental Land Management payments promoting sustainable land management practices; create a framework for environmental management on different land use functions—high-yield farmland, low-yield farmland and semi-natural land; and ensure that English farmers were on a level playing field when it came to meeting environmental and animal welfare standards under trade agreements.
- The fourth theme was ‘create a long-term shift in our food culture’. Under this theme it was recommended that the government:
- Invest £1 billion in innovation to create a better food system.
- Create a National Food System Data programme.
- Strengthen Government procurement rules to ensure that taxpayer money is spent on healthy and sustainable food.
- Set clear targets and bring in legislation for long-term change.
- The recommendations are designed to ensure funding for systemic change; the collection of data on land-use, food production, distribution and exchange, and the health and environmental impacts of food; that government uses institutional procurement to ensure that food is healthy and sustainable in accordance with its own policies and goals; and clear legislated targets for food system change.
- The UK Government food strategy (2022) ‘focuses on longer-term measures to support a resilient, healthier, and more sustainable food system that is affordable to all’. It is designed to enable ‘a prosperous agri-food sector’, while ensuring that ‘healthier and more sustainable diets can be achieved by all’. The objectives of the strategy are to deliver:
- A prosperous agri-food and seafood sector that ensures a secure food supply in an unpredictable world and contributes to the levelling up agenda through good quality jobs around the country.
- A sustainable, nature positive, affordable food system that provides choice and access to high quality products that support healthier and home-grown diets for all.
- Trade that provides export opportunities and consumer choice through imports, without compromising our regulatory standards for food, whether produced domestically or imported.
- The prosperity of the agrifood sector will be delivered through:
- Maintaining levels of domestic production through productivity gain and new farming schemes.
- Research and innovation.
- Workforce development, including skilled and seasonal migration.
- Skills development.
- The sustainability of the agrifood sector would be delivered through:
- Legislative frameworks to incentivise farmers and food producers to adopt more sustainable practices.
- A land use framework ‘to ensure we meet our net zero and biodiversity targets, and help our farmers adapt to a changing climate, whilst continuing to produce high quality, affordable produce that supports a healthier diet’.
- Developing interventions to encourage and enable healthier and more sustainable diets.
- Introducing measures to improve school food and build a strong food curriculum.
- Through a Food Data Transparency Partnership, implement mandatory public reporting against a set of health metrics and explore a similar approach to sustainability and animal welfare; and provide consumers with the information they need to make more sustainable, ethical, and healthier food choices.
- Using institutional procurement to encourage spending on locally produced food or food certified to higher environmental production standards.
- The strategy also highlights a range of issues and problems surrounding food security. It acknowledges that trade strengthens food security while enabling access to foodstuff that ‘would be impossible or impractical to produce domestically’. It notes the need for innovation in production through things like protected cropping, alternative proteins, and regenerative farming. It highlights the challenges for the agri-food sector in securing labour and skills ‘despite the variety of roles and career pathways available’.
- The strategy also highlights issues around health and diet. It noted that ‘on average adults are consuming 200-300 more calories each day than needed’; and that people do not eat enough seafood. It observed that ‘the link between deprivation and dietary outcomes is not only about the cost of healthier food’ but also ‘about having the equipment, cooking skills, and time to prepare and cook healthier food than more convenient alternatives’.It emphasised the importance of nutritional education, stating that ‘it is important that individuals build a better understanding of their food choices from a young age as early childhood experiences have far-reaching implications for later in life’.The strategy also provides for the continuation and development of school meals programs.It observed that public sector food ‘should be healthier, more sustainable and provided by a diverse range of local suppliers’. Its vision is that ‘public sector food and catering is an exemplar for wider society, delivering positive health, animal welfare, environmental and socio-economic impacts’.
- The strategy also highlights the collection of data on food and health. A UK Food Security Report will be published triennially. In addition, the UK is planning the launch of the Food Data Transparency Partnership, which will ‘champion consumer interests, providing people with the information they need to make more sustainable, ethical, and healthier food choices, and incentivise industry to produce healthier and more ethical and sustainable food’.
Scotland
1.24Scotland has been on a food policy journey since 2009, when it launched Recipe for Success – Scotland’s National Food and Drink Policy. The targets of the policy were:
- support the growth of our food and drink industry;
- build on our reputation as a land of food and drink;
- ensure we make healthy and sustainable choices;
- make our public sector an exemplar for sustainable food procurement;
- ensure our food supplies are secure and resilient to change;
- make food both available and affordable to all; and
- ensure that our people understand more about the food they eat.
- In 2014, the Scottish Government released a discussion document, Becoming a Good Food Nation, designed to build upon and expand the earlier policy. As well as being the basis for an extensive program of consultation, the policy was the foundation for the development of a Programme of Measures, targeting:
- Health
- Social justice
- Knowledge
- Environmental sustainability
- Prosperity.
- The Programme ties food policy into a broader policy framework and initiatives covering health policy, education, environment, economic and industry development, and measures to address food insecurity. This includes:
- Support for allotments and community gardens.
- Dietary guidance under Eat Well Your Way.
- The Healthcare Retail Standard—sets criteria where 50% of food and 70% of drink sold in all National Health Service Scotland shops is 'healthy' and only certain items can be promoted.
- The Healthy Living Programme—encouraging retailers to prioritise the sale of healthy food.
- Proposed legislated restrictions on the marketing of food and drink high in fat, sugar and salt.
- An out of home food strategy—providing a voluntary framework for out of home food outlets to help them provide healthier foods in support of Scottish Dietary Goals. It includes calorie labelling and a Code of Practice for Children’s Menus.
- School Food and Drink Regulations.
- Food For Life programme—which aims to increase the amount of healthy, locally sourced food served by local authorities in early years settings, schools and care homes.
- In addition, the Scottish Government has established a Ministerial Working Group on Food ‘to co-ordinate action in relation to food and drink matters across government’; created the position of National Chef; and passed the Good Food Nation (Scotland) Act 2022, underpinning the work undertaken through the Good Food Nation policy. The Act requires Scottish Ministers and relevant public authorities ‘to produce plans of their policies in relation to food and set out what they will do to make those plans real’. The plans will deliver outcomes, among other things, for ‘social and economic wellbeing, the environment, people’s health and physical and mental wellbeing, economic development, animal welfare, education and child poverty’. The effect of the plans is that ministers and relevant authorities must have regard to their plans when exercising their functions. The Act requires the establishment of a Scottish Food Commission to scrutinise and make recommendations ‘in relation to the progress in achieving the outcomes in the good food nation plans; conducting research; and providing advice to Scottish Ministers and relevant authorities in carrying out their duties under the Act’.
- In response to the war in Ukraine, the Scottish Government appointed a Food Security and Supply Taskforce to ‘monitor, identify and respond to any potential disruption to food security and supply resulting from the impact of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine’. In June 2022, the Taskforce recommended, among other things, the creation of a dedicated Food Security Unit within the Scottish Government. This unit would ‘manage ongoing monitoring of supply chain vulnerabilities, including infrastructure, (e.g. a dedicated food security function), and linking with future food security work’, allowing Government and industry ‘to react as quickly as possible to any future shocks, as these arise’.