Few would disagree that we need to do something about the UK food system. It’s not working for farmers, our health, rivers, wildlife, and it’s far from climate resilient to boot. Flooding and other climate instability is affecting crops with ever more frequency.
But will this UK government – with its growth focus, new food strategies, land use frameworks, 25-year roadmaps and more – get this right when many others have failed? As over 40% of the food we eat is imported, any trade deals made will affect many UK farm livelihoods and the standards – environmental, worker, animal welfare – of the food we eat.
Is a US food trade deal on the cards
On the matter of a US/UK trade deal, we’ve been here before. The threat of cheap, chlorinated washed chicken and hormone treated beef imports loomed large post Brexit, but no deal was struck with the US, though others such as with New Zealand and Australia hold risks. With new leaders in both governments and a tariff-filled discourse, a new deal may be on the table.
Chlorine washed chicken is not an issue of chlorine per se, but what it tries to hide – poor hygiene and growth issues related to intensively housed, fast growing chickens. The US still allows use of artificial hormones to boost beef growth and many pesticides we have restricted or banned including the bee-killing neonicotinoid pesticides.
Our farming standards are not perfect, but they are better, and farmers are being asked to do much more for nature. Yet if the US gets its way, their produce won’t be labelled, making it harder to choose not to buy US foods. So, whilst Nigel Farage MP insists that we should accept this US food produced to lower standards, much to the alarm of farmers across the UK, we need to resist such a threat to nature, farmers and good, safe and healthy food production.
We’ve been promised many times by Steve Reed MP, Defra secretary of state, that standards will be protected. But it’s unclear how much sway he will have over Number 10. And right now, he’s drowning in farm and food policies whilst the trust between Defra and farmers, following changes to inheritance tax and the environmental farm schemes pause, is at an all-time low.
A new food strategy or business as usual?
Could the new food strategy help stop low standard imports? The new advisory board, created to guide its development, has been created in close consultation with the Institute of Grocery Distribution which will act as secretariat. The board is dominated by big food industry interests – seven of the 12 independent representatives – alongside one farmer, two NGOs (including the excellent Food Foundation) one academic and civil servants.
This dominance suggests a very strong focus on maintaining, maybe tweaking, the status quo and balance of power in supply chains. Is this what’s needed? Can government create a much better system from the ideas, beneficiaries and creators of the old?
With the huge threat of climatic instability, the continued decline of nature, the staggering costs of diet-related ill health and poor food access, and wobbling globalisation, is asking the existing industry wise?
As the whole system needs to change – with major shifts in objectives, power and resources – it’s hard to envisage this group delivering much. What’s needed is more nature friendly farmers and better food traders designing new routes to market based on fair dealing and farm nature recovery. We need ecosystem, climate, food security, public health and circular economy experts at the table.
A strong warning emerges from decades-long efforts to address public health harms, such as obesity, from the food system. Unhealthy diets – and the ’Junk food cycle’ described in the 2021 National Food Strategy – costs the UK around £268bn per year. A recent set of interviews with prime ministers and health ministers revealed just how far powerful food industry interests reached to stop action i.e. right to the top. Despite their efforts and overwhelming evidence on ill health and economic harm caused by the food system, any attempts (for example, 14 failed obesity strategies since 1990) were blocked.
The same could be said of genuine government efforts to protect the farmed environment. We can’t protect any of it – or deliver sustainable growth and food security – without changing the system beyond the farm gate – from manufacturers, marketers and retailers to consumers.
A fair, healthy and nature-based food growth agenda
A suitable food strategy, alongside wider policies, would be delivering a coherent, cross-departmental approach which balances needs from the land for food, nature, climate resilience, health and good jobs. Developed in a fair and transparent process, it would be about reducing food waste, a switch to more nature-friendly and climate-neutral diets, traceability and labelling tools, curbing junk food marketing, and setting nature-based standards for public food procurement. Effective environmental and welfare regulation, and the right farm incentives, must prioritise nature-based food production.
But none of it will work unless supply chains are fair. We need stronger and joined up regulation of all supply chains to remove abusive practices, whilst building up new, shorter, more rewarding markets. Planning and investment for this better food supply, and strong new trade policy – based on core environmental, welfare and health standards – would ensure our farmers don’t have to complete with lower standard imports.
Scale up best practice
As a wise man once said, “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete”. Many organic, regenerative and nature friendly farmers and food traders are building a new reality – one based on values such as nature restoration, fair dealing, and climate resilience, with new routes to market.
Innovation will be discussed by the Food Strategy Advisory Board. High tech, robotics, genetics and narrow ‘efficiency’ goals sadly may dominate. Instead, it should be about scaling out these true innovators. The government needs to listen to their ideas, reject a US trade deal on food, and make junk food, unfairly traded, nature-negative food obsolete.
A version of this appeared on The Wildlife Trusts’ website.
