A major review in the UK of food in the public sector will throw up questions about environmental issues, food production methods, local suppliers and nutrition. Government hopes the review will lead to more environmentally-friendly meals.
Food and farming minister Lord Whitty launched the initiative this week that will set out to examine a variety of issues such as the environmental impact of production and distribution, waste, energy and biodiversity.
"Food sustainability is a complex concept. There are many factors involved, for example freshness, nutritional content, productionmethod, animal welfare, energy and pesticide usage. All of these are important," said Lord Whitty.
"More than £1.8 billion is spent in England by public purchasers on food each year and millions of people eat courtesy of the state each day,"he added. "Up to the present day, ensuring the sustainability of this food has not been co-ordinated across government, and individual authorities for the most part have been working on their own initiative. The central delivery plan gives us a framework to co-ordinate the initiative across the public sector."
Defra's delivery plan includes running regional pilot schemes for improving co-operation amongfarmers, growers and local suppliers where difficulties areidentified and 'engaging with major food companies and food suppliers to identifybarriers to success and developing recommendations'.
The initiative launched this week is part of the government's Strategy for Sustainable Farming and Food and will feed into the Framework for Sustainable Development on the Government Estate. Sir Don Curry, chairman of the independent Implementation Group overseeing delivery of the Strategy for Sustainable Farming and Foodcommented:" Providing good quality, nutritional food can also help deliver keyobjectives in health, educational and behavioural terms."