Weakening UK food law enforcement: a risky tactic in Brexit

The UK Food Standards Agency (FSA) is beginning to roll out a far-reaching programme of regulatory change called Regulating Our Future (ROF). This Briefing Paper argues that ROF risks: - Making the UK’s food supply less safe by further weakening systems that are already too weak; - Undermining the ability of UK food producers to export to the EU after Brexit; - Creating irreconcilable conflicts of interests, because rather than having public officials inspect food businesses, the food businesses will be able to choose who ‘marks their homework’. Professors Erik Millstone (University of Sussex) and Tim Lang (City, University of London) provide a detailed and powerful critique of the Food Standards Agency’s proposals. They conclude that ROF represents a fundamental and detrimental shift in the role, approach and public responsibilities of the FSA and the local authority officers who are the bedrock of food safety in the UK. They also show why these unwelcome proposals are especially unwise in the context of negotiations over Brexit, when the public needs a strong, vigilant and effective FSA. The authors call for ROF to be halted pending further review by a special Parliamentary Joint Select Committee of the Health and Environment, Food & Rural Affairs Committees

Hormone-treated beef: Should Britain accept it after Brexit?

This Briefing explains why the use of synthetic, industrially-manufactured hormones in beef production, and the threat of importing hormone-produced beef after Brexit, matter for UK consumers. There is robust scientific evidence showing that meat produced using one key hormone (17β-oestradiol) increases the cancer risk to consumers, while for the rest the available evidence is insufficient to show that their use is acceptably safe. The Briefing outlines the basis of the scientific and policy disputes over the use of supplementary hormones in beef cattle production. It shows that, although the USA is most associated with hormone-reared beef, other countries that want to export their beef to the UK, post Brexit, either allow hormones to be used, or are suspected of doing so. The EU has been reasonably vigilant on consumers’ behalf on this issue, and it has robust scientific grounds for its ban on their use. The risk from beef hormones is one of many issues on which UK consumers have benefited from the EU’s measures to protect public and environmental health. Chlorine-washed chicken is another example

Multiobjective Robust Control with HIFOO 2.0

Multiobjective control design is known to be a difficult problem both in theory and practice. Our approach is to search for locally optimal solutions of a nonsmooth optimization problem that is built to incorporate minimization objectives and constraints for multiple plants. We report on the success of this approach using our public-domain Matlab toolbox HIFOO 2.0, comparing our results with benchmarks in the literature

The application of the hydrocyclone to the separation of gluten and starch in aqueous suspension

Call number: LD2668 .T4 1961 M5

Why Local Authorities should prepare Food Brexit Plans

The UK’s food supply will be affected by Brexit whatever the outcome of the Parliamentary vote on the Draft Withdrawal Agreement. As the 29 March 2019 date for leaving the EU approaches, preparations to ensure we maintain a safe, adequate and sustainable food supply need to start urgently. Local Authorities (LAs) have a vital part to play in these preparations. More guidance, paying attention to the food specifics, is felt to be needed. LAs have a key role in the UK’s food system, with responsibilities including the enforcement of food safety and standards regulation, the control of imported food at ports and airports and the certification of foods for export. They also have unique knowledge of relevant local professionals, institutions, businesses and networks. This briefing aims to help Local Authorities prepare for Food Brexit. It shows why LAs should prepare Food Brexit Plans, and outlines five courses of action they could consider. The briefing recommends that Local Authorities: • Create Food Resilience Teams • Anticipate and reduce the impact of Food Brexit, particularly on SMEs • Narrow the information gap and treat the public openly and fairly • Prepare for public engagement • Be a local food voice so that central government knows the local realities

Feeding Britain: Food Security after Brexit

This Food Brexit Briefing brings together three interlinked issues that demand policy attention as the clock ticks towards Brexit: 1. The question of whether the Government is paying enough attention to agri-food in the negotiating process, given its central role in both public wellbeing and the national economy. 2. The threat a careless Brexit poses to the UK’s short-term food security – and any long-term attempt to develop a genuinely sustainable food strategy for the whole of the UK. 3. The risk generated to the UK’s status as a potential trading partner of the EU by the Food Standards Agency’s decision to press ahead with major reform of UK food safety regulation, at a time when regulatory stability and clarity have never been more important. The report was written by FRC’s Professor Tim Lang, with Professor Erik Millstone (Sussex), Tony Lewis (Head of Policy at Chartered Institute for Environmental Health) and Professor Terry Marsden (Cardiff). It takes stock of ‘food Brexit’ and argues that a hard Brexit or no-deal Brexit (and retreat to WTO rules) would imperil the sustainability and security of Britain’s food supply. The report recommends that the Government should: - Maintain a clear and explicit focus on the potential adverse effects of Brexit on food security in the UK, while negotiating the UK’s future trading relationships with the EU and other jurisdictions. - Publish Brexit impact studies on the UK’s agricultural and food system for the White Paper and Chequers Statement and any subsequent proposals. - Ensure that high food standards remain at the heart of any future trade deals. - Provide clarity on its proposed migration policy, taking account of the contributions that non-UK citizens of the EU are making to the quantity and quality of the UK’s food supply and services. - Avoid a hard Food Brexit at all costs.The UK must not retreat to a WTO-rules-based regime. The EU would then categorise the UK as a ‘3rd Country’, which could be a recipe for chaos. - Create a new Sustainable Food Security Strategy. This would engage with the complexities of the food system and the multiple criteria by which it should be evaluated; and identify clear priorities and pathways for progress. The report also calls on the Food Standards Agency to: - Address the calls for clarification and evidence posed in the paper in respect of its Regulating Our Future (ROF) Where such clarification or evidence is not available, then the Agency should modify or suspend the introduction of its proposals, at least until after Brexit

A Food Brexit: time to get real – A Brexit Briefing

The implications of Brexit for food are potentially enormous. This verdict applies, whether there is a ‘hard’ or ‘soft’ Brexit. The UK food system, consumer tastes and prices have been thoroughly Europeanised. This will be impossible to cut out or back by March 2019 without enormous consequences. The UK food system faces real challenges on food security. This paper summarises 16 major issues on which Food Brexit has the potential to threaten UK food resilience and security: o Vision. What goals would any new post EU food system have? Will these address the looming sustainability challenge which is a mix of ecosystems, social and public health challenges? o New food legislation will be needed. Will this be a transfer of EU legislation followed by the Secretary of State sitting with his or her 'delete’ button? o Food security. The UK’s home production has been steadily declining. The UK food system ought to be improving its resilience. It isn’t. It’s like the rabbit caught in the headlights – with no goals, no leadership, and eviscerated key ministries o Sourcing. The UK derives much of the food vital for health – fruit and veg – from within the EU. The pound sterling has been dropping. Food price inflation is rising. o Public support. Clarifying and then aligning what British consumers say they want with what is negotiated by March 2019. o Food quality and standards. Brexit campaigners ignored the inbuilt reliance the UK has on pan-European institutions, to which we contribute. A vast array of institutions and scientific infrastructure keeps UK food fit to eat. Brexit campaigners did not inform consumers/voters that US agribusiness is salivating at the prospect of selling foods which have weaker standards, nor that foods derived on world markets use standards which are weaker than the EU’s and those of the USA. o Replacing the Common Agricultural Policy and Common Fisheries Policy. The CAP and CFP are core and old EU policies. They have been much attacked in the UK, often for good reason. Leaving CAP and the CFP exposes a vast policy vacuum. The new Secretary of State has made a statement about even tearing up the CFP predecessor the London Fisheries Convention from 1964! The Coalition and subsequent Conservative Governments provided no policy vision other than a belief that Agri-technology and an export drive will suffice for farming, and that reasserting a 200 mile exclusion will resolve unsustainable fish sourcing. They will not. What’s the point of farming and fishing? How can they mix food production and ecosystems services? These are vital issues for the era of climate change and ecosystem stresses. o Food labour. The entire UK food system is dependent on migrant labour. UK food manufacturing is our largest manufacturing sector but one third of its workforce is migrant. UK horticulture has massive dependency on migrants to pick ‘British’ food UK consumers say they want. Technology will not replace the vast army of migrant labour which works in food service. o Subsidies. HM Treasury and Defra have long been ideologically opposed to subsidies for farmers yet CAP/EU subsidies provide about half of UK farm incomes. The Conservative manifesto talked of maintaining subsidies until 2022. Then what? Defra and HM Treasure are committed to cutting ‘Pillar 1’, implying that if there are to be any subsidies, the base line for them would be the existing 20% that goes to Pillar 2. The subsidy question exposes the shameful inequalities within the UK food system. Primary growers get a tiny percentage of what consumers spend on food. o National and regional food policy. The UK has no food policy. Scotland and Wales have been developing their own visions; England is the problem. Seen collectively, the UK will have a dwindling mishmash of policies, once EU frameworks are removed. The UK has fairly consistently failed to contribute positively in EU debates, playing to the corporate gallery at home, arguing for cutting subsidies, rather than working hard inside for progressive policies. The world’s food system faces immense challenges. The drift in and after a Brexit is the worst policy situation imaginable. We have options. The paper explores some options mooted within and beyond government circles: a new imperialism (expecting others to feed us); reinvigorating UK food systems; commitment to sustainability; and more. o Relationships with neighbours. The wild talk before, during and since the Referendum ignores geography. The EU 27 member states are our neighbours. They are incredulous at the hostile, stupid talk from leading politicians. British negotiators must build bridges. Or does the UK really want hostility? This would be madness for a country which does not feed itself. o Divided Food Britain. The UK is a food divided country. The health gap between rich and poor is heavily associated with diet and food costs. Recent events underline how important it is to tackle these divisions. Merely promising ever cheaper prices or more food banks is not a reasoned policy response. o Institutions and infrastructure. The UK enters Brexit negotiations in a weak situation. The Food Standards Agency is a shadow of its former self. Defra has had years of cuts and suffers a serious staff shortage, just when the UK needs many of the best and brightest civil servants to negotiate the most important element of Europeanisation – our food. To leave the EU would sever the UK from many bodies which underpin food – from scientific advisory bodies to regulators, from research programmes to subsidies to regions. What is going to replace these? There is silence from Defra and the Government. o The negotiations. In 18 months or so, the most complex reconfiguration of the UK food system is to be completed. Analysts now realise that this is at best folly or at worst a recipe for chaos. Never has there been such a large body of thinking within the food system, from outside critics to inside track policy cognoscenti, that the UK ought to take a deep breath, reconsider and pursue a well-thought-out strategy. o The role of Big Food. The food system is already dominated by huge food companies. Brexit must not be an opportunity for further corporate capture of market power. The good news is that increasing numbers of food companies now recognise how serious impending crises from health, ecosystems and social divisions are. The UK public must ensure that what emerges ahead – whether the UK leaves or stays, the food system is more firmly shaped by values of justice and decency, as well as good quality. The realities of a Food Brexit are awesome. The British public has not been informed about its implications. Many people who voted for Brexit will be hardest hit by a ‘hard’ Brexit – people on low incomes, the elderly, farmers, people in the North of England. This paper urges politicians, civil society and academics who understand the food system to speak up and speak out. Brexit is a political construct. It should not be a recipe for food insecurity. The paper gives specific recommendations in each section, centred on how to enhance food security in the UK. Our overall view is that this will require HM Government to: o give a policy commitment to a modern, low impact, health-oriented UK food system, and set out how that will be achieved, with or without Food Brexit; o create a new statutory framework for UK food, which we term ‘One Nation Food’; o link this new statutory UK food framework to the UN Sustainable Development Goals and the 2015 Paris Climate Change agreements (known as COP21); o set new clear targets for UK food security (food supply, quality, health and consumption) which go beyond mere quantity of supply by addressing ecosystems and social systems resilience; o create a new National Commission on Food and Agricultural to provide oversight and review, and to be a source of advice trusted by the public. o to make a clear and explicit commitment to address food matters in the Brexit negotiations which (bizarrely) has not been given; o include in the above a continued but reconstituted, co-operative set of arrangements with the EU food agencies with regard to regulatory synergies in food trade and standards; o develop an approach to food policy which is politically open and socially inclusive

Transforming innovation for sustainability

The urgency of charting pathways to sustainability that keep human societies within a "safe operating space" has now been clarified. Crises in climate, food, biodiversity, and energy are already playing out across local and global scales and are set to increase as we approach critical thresholds. Drawing together recent work from the Stockholm Resilience Centre, the Tellus Institute, and the STEPS Centre, this commentary article argues that ambitious Sustainable Development Goals are now required along with major transformation, not only in policies and technologies, but in modes of innovation themselves, to meet them. As examples of dryland agriculture in East Africa and rural energy in Latin America illustrate, such "transformative innovation" needs to give far greater recognition and power to grassroots innovation actors and processes, involving them within an inclusive, multi-scale innovation politics. The three dimensions of direction, diversity, and distribution along with new forms of "sustainability brokering" can help guide the kinds of analysis and decision making now needed to safeguard our planet for current and future generations