An absence of non-industry representatives on a new working group on food and health has raised concerns that ministers are repeating the mistakes of the past. Nick Hughes reports.
The make-up of the government’s new working group on health has been made public and it has not gone down well with campaigners.
Just weeks after Footprint revealed that reporting of key health metrics by large food companies would no longer be mandatory as part of the government’s food data transparency partnership (FDTP), membership of the health working group was confirmed as being made up entirely of food industry representatives.
Executives from the likes of Deliveroo, KFC, Pret and Compass will join those from major retailers and manufacturers in the task of agreeing the proposed metrics and streamlining existing reporting requirements with the ultimate aim of incentivising the sale of healthier food.
This has sparked fears among public health groups that what began as a widely praised attempt to bring transparency to key health metrics, such as business-specific sales of food and drink high in fat, sugar or salt (HFSS), has quickly turned into ‘Responsibility Deal #2’ – a reference to the David Cameron-era, industry-led programme of voluntary health commitments that was ineffective in turning the tide on obesity-related ill health.
Moreover, reports suggest the creation of the new health working group means that calorie and salt reformulation programmes, that had already ground to a halt since the work of Public Health England was folded into the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), will now be side-lined. This follows the failure of the government’s voluntary sugar reduction programme to achieve its targets.
The list of health working group members includes businesses that have already made significant commitments to selling healthier, more sustainable food. Compass, for example, is targeting a 40% switch from animal to plant-based proteins by 2030 in the UK & Ireland, while Tesco – another group member – has set a target to increase the proportion of sales from healthier products to 65% by 2025 under pressure from investment NGO Share Action.
Yet the optics of having an all industry group decide which health metrics to report are bad for a government that has already rowed back on delivering a series of obesity policies, including a long-awaited ban on volume promotions of HFSS foods and free drinks refills.
DHSC has been keen to point out that NGOs can feed into the FDTP via an ongoing programme of engagement – with a first stakeholder workshop on health scheduled for October – however the impression that businesses are marking their own homework will be hard to shift and health experts privately fear that the agenda for the group has already been set.
Public health groups have responded to recent policy setbacks by putting on a united front in order to make the case for mandatory measures. A new ‘Recipe for change’ campaign has been assembled with members including the Obesity Health Alliance, British Heart Foundation, British Medical Association and Sustainable Food Trust. The 36-strong group of organisations has already called on the government to introduce a new industry levy on sugar and salt used in manufactured foods or in restaurants and catering.
Narrow eco focus
On paper at least, the eco working group of the FDTP is more of a broad church; alongside industry representatives from the likes of Nando’s, Tesco, Danone and Bidfood are specialists from the Soil Association’s exchange programme and Wrap, along with Joseph Poore, director of the Oxford Martin programme on food sustainability analytics at Oxford University.
Poore is best known for his work modelling the environmental impact of different foods (he co-authored a frequently cited academic paper on the subject with colleague Thomas Nemecek in 2018 and is currently building the Hestia platform to better understand the environmental impacts of different agricultural products and production practices). Wrap too has been leading on creating guidance for measuring and reporting supply chain emissions.
Their inclusion, however, appears to speak more to the eco working group’s focus on harmonising reporting of scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions for the food supply chain than it does of a desire to invite a wide range of perspectives.
The group’s terms of reference state that it is being established to introduce consistent scope 3 measurement and reporting for the food and drink sector and a mandatory methodology for eco-labelling with the ambition to work towards a public consultation by the end of 2023. This represents a significant narrowing in scope from the original FDTP proposal, which was for businesses to report key sustainability and animal welfare metrics in line with the approach to health data.
The exclusion of major advocacy groups such as WWF, Compassion in World Farming and consumer organisation Which? from the eco working group suggests that broader sustainability targets are not on the medium-term agenda for the government; or if they are they will once again be largely steered by businesses.
