Eating Better Alliance – of which EPHA is a partner network – has published its new Policy Briefing outlining a set of recommendations to policy makers aimed at promoting healthy diets. Although the focus is national (UK), there is a strong European dimension to the solutions proposed, which are in line with EPHA’s advocacy messages of a Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) reform to support an integrated food and agriculture policy and system.
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The article below is a modified version of content from the Eating Better Alliance’s website.
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The Eating Better Alliance launched its policy recommendations to promote healthy sustainable diets. It calls on policy makers in the UK, devolved administrations and the EU to:
- Publish and promote new official guidelines on healthy sustainable diets that include advice on eating less and healthier meat;
- Introduce clear and mandatory procurement standards for sustainable healthy food for schools, hospitals, government departments, prisons, etc;
- Support and encourage farming to produce meat in ways that benefit the environment, health and animal welfare and provides a fair return for farmers.
- Ensure that Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) reform delivers a European Healthy Sustainable Food & Farming Policy.
As evidence continues to mount on the importance of sustainable diets to help feed the world fairly and healthily, Eating Better is calling on governments to ensure that policy-making addresses food security, focused as much on food consumption as it does on production. It is also essential that food policy better integrates health, environment and farming policies and research.
In helping people, farmers and food companies need to make a ‘shift’. Eating Better thinks there is a “key role for governments to think about all the levers, incentives and nudges to help create the cultural and economic shifts necessary to make our food system fairer, greener and healthier”.
Governments at all levels must work with stakeholders to create the vision, provide the policy coherence and the political will to use the levers that only governments have (including regulatory and fiscal instruments). Governments are also well placed to convene experts, fund research, report and monitor progress.
The Eating Better Alliance calls on governments, the food industry and all those who can make a difference, to help people move towards eating less and healthier meat, as well as more plant-based foods. The Alliance’s policy recommendations have been produced in consultation with 39 supporting organisations and partner networks.
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The full briefing can be downloaded for free here
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