The government’s chief food adviser has condemned what ministers have presented as a historic national plan to tackle food poverty and obesity, saying it is “not a strategy” and warning that it could mean more children will go hungry. .
Henry Dimbleby’s verdict is another piece of bad news for Boris Johnson, as the white paper is a direct response to last year’s extensive review of the British food system, led by the restaurateur.
Johnson’s plan was presented as the first such plan since rationing 75 years ago, positioning England as a leader in food and the environment in a post-Brexit world. But the final plan removes many of Dimbleby’s key recommendations.
“It’s not a strategy,” food chain founder Leon said of the final document, which has been shown to him. “It doesn’t set out a clear picture of why we have the problems we have now, and it doesn’t set out what needs to be done.”
The document, which Environment Secretary George Eustice will present to the House of Commons on Monday, remains virtually unchanged from a leaked draft revealed by the Guardian last week.
In his paper, Dimbleby made a number of well-known suggestions, including a significant expansion of free school meals, more environmental and welfare standards in agriculture, and a 30% reduction in meat and dairy consumption.
In contrast, the few specific policies chosen by the government include an increase in domestic tomato production and facilitating the sale of wild deer to stalker deer.
Dimbleby said the cost-of-living crisis meant there was an even greater need for free school meals than when he drew up his plan, which called for up to 1.5 million more children in England to receive them.
“With inflation as it is, both the amount spent on free school meals is significantly lower in real terms than a year ago and the number of people who need it is significantly more; we need to address that,” he said. Dimbleby.
“I hope it’s being watched, people are inflating in poverty and food vendors are inflating so they don’t produce healthy food,” he warned.
He also criticized something that did change between the draft seen by the Guardian and the final version, which involved removing commitments to facilitate the import of food with high animal welfare and environmental standards.
He said: “Once again, the government has ruled out the issue of how not only do we import food that destroys the environment and is cruel to animals, but we cannot create a good system of fair agriculture and then export that damage to I thought the government would address that, but it didn’t. “
Dimbleby’s recommendations on diet and public health, such as the use of a sugar and salt tax to fund healthy food options for people in poverty, were also ignored, and the issue was deviated in an upcoming white paper on health inequalities. “There was nothing really healthy,” Dimbleby said.
The plan also does not include any ambition to reduce meat consumption, and the Dimbleby report notes that 85% of the UK’s cultivated land is used to grow food for livestock or for raising meat.
“They have said that we need alternative proteins, but they have not mentioned the inevitable truth that meat consumption in this country is not compatible with an agricultural system that protects agriculture and sequestrates carbon,” he said.
Opposition parties also expressed concern. Jim McMahon, secretary of food and environment in the shadow of the work, said the government “had absolutely no ambition” to deal with food price crises.
He said: “This is just a vague statement of intent, not a concrete proposal to address the major problems facing our country. Calling it a food strategy is limiting nonsense.”
Tim Farron, the Liberal Democrat’s spokesman for rural affairs, said the lack of protections on food standards for imports runs the risk of being “a total betrayal of British farmers”. He said: “Time and time again, Boris Johnson has promised something and then done the opposite. It just shows that this government cannot be trusted to defend rural communities.”
Food television presenter and climate activist Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall condemned the lack of any plan to reduce meat and dairy consumption, calling it “just lazy and without backbone and complaining about the status quo of the industry food. “
Rob Percival, head of food policy for the Soil Association, said: “It seems that what broke this strategy was not a lack of good intentions, but a narrow-minded ideology that believes reshaping diets “.
Louisa Casson, head of food and forestry at Greenpeace UK, added: “By ignoring climate scientists and their own experts in favor of industry lobbyists, the government has published a strategy that it will only perpetuate a broken food system and see our planet. cook. “
Announcing the food plan, Johnson called it “a plan for how we will support farmers, boost British industry and help protect people from the impacts of future shocks by safeguarding our food security.”