Food, the UK and the EU: Brexit or Bremain?

This briefing paper explores the food terrain exposed by the wider “Brexit versus Bremain” Referendum question to be decided by the voting UK public on June 23. It is written to raise issues; to invite academics and civil society working on food matters to consider how their work fits this momentous issue; and to aid informed decisions. The paper follows from debates and concerns expressed at the 6th City Food Symposium on UK food and Brexit held on December 14, 2015

The Meservey-Tedrov effect in FSF double tunneling junctions

Double tunneling junctions of ferromagnet-superconductor-ferromagnet electrodes (FSF) show a jump in the conductance when a parallel magnetic field reverses the magnetization of one of the ferromagnetic electrodes. This change is generally attributed to the spin-valve effect or to pair breaking in the superconductor because of spin accumulation. In this paper it is shown that the Meservey-Tedrov effect causes a similar change in the conductance since the magnetic field changes the energy spectrum of the quasi-particles in the superconductor. A reversal of the bias reverses the sign in the conductance jump

Horticulture in the UK: potential for meeting dietary guideline demands

Executive Summary Public health analysis suggests that many lives can be saved if the UK population actually followed dietary guidelines on fruit and vegetable daily intake. The Government’s Eatwell Plate suggests that more than a third of UK daily diets should comprise fruit and vegetables and yet currently less than a quarter of diets are taken from this source. A UK debate on the status of the horticultural industry and its potential to meet a recommended increase in consumption is long overdue. This paper, largely based on secondary sources of data, presents current national levels of fruit and vegetable production and consumption. It outlines the origins of what horticultural produce is consumed here and the potential for meeting demand should diets adapt to those suggested by government guidelines. The Briefing provides a summary of key facts on UK horticulture based on information that is publicly available. An FRC seminar is planned to take account of non-documented industry views in order to complete or correct the picture presented here but our current objective is to outline the situation as it appears from published data: • There has been a big decline in area given to horticultural production. From 1985 to 2014, there has been a decline of 27% for fruit and vegetables combined. The area growing vegetables has declined by 26% and the area growing fruit by 35%. • Fruit and vegetables are by far the greatest source of imports in the UK food system. The trade gap in horticulture has risen to £7.8 billion a year, about 37% of the UK’s total food trade gap of £21 billion in 2014. Although some growers have extensive growing operations in Southern Europe and further afield, this makes sense for them as commercial enterprises but still does not resolve the serious lack of UK horticultural output. This is important to meet the 21st century challenge of increasing production for health everywhere and to ensure that rich consumer societies do not excessively distort international trade for their purposes. • Some imports (e.g. pineapples, avocados) could not be grown in the UK (or not yet) but others which could be UK grown (e.g. brassicas, mushrooms, lettuce) have seen massive drops in production. • The proportion of the adult population (over 16 years) in the UK consuming five or more portions of fruit and vegetables per day stood at only 26% in 2013. • Only 16% of children achieved an intake of 5-a-day or more in 2013. • The Consumer Price Index for food items as a whole has shown a significant increase of 35% in 2007-2013. Within this, the price of vegetables has increased by 27% and fresh fruit by 26%, less than the average for the food sector as a whole. • Horticulture is unevenly distributed across the country, partly for climatic reasons, but areas that used to have sizeable sectors (e.g. the South West) have seen a heavy decline. A ‘re-boot’ of regional strategies is overdue to incorporate a review of planning and financial regulations and to rebuild bioregional resilience where appropriate. • Land used for horticulture is highly productive. Only 3.5% of UK croppable land is down to horticulture, yet producing £3.7 billion worth of produce. For every one hectare of land under fruit and vegetables, 4.5 hectares are used for wheat for animal feed- with the inevitably slower and less efficient energy conversion rates. • Horticultural wages for seasonal workers are low, not helped by the abolition of the Agricultural Wages Board. Horticulture occupies only 2% of the farmed area in England yet employs 12% of the agricultural labour force and at least 35% of the UK’s casual farm labour force. The Briefing makes a series of recommendations: • The Government (DEFRA) forthcoming 25 year Food Strategy should apply a ‘health lens’ to its proposed focus on ‘Brand Britain’ • Government, growers, land use specialists, industry and regional bodies should begin to plan the infrastructure needed for a massive reinvestment in, and policy support for, horticulture. • Both academics and civil society should examine the scope for encouraging demand for more home produced, sustainable horticulture and higher consumption of fruit and vegetables in the UK • Public health and environmental analysts should work more clearly on how to narrow the gap between supply of, and demand for, fruit and vegetables. Modelling studies as well as practical investigations should be funded. • A new research strand should be set up by the Government Research Councils into how to build demand for more sustainable home production. • A new more unified voice between all parties is needed to champion the British horticultural sector; this lack should be the subject of a joint inquiry by the Parliamentary Health, Environmental Audit and Environment, Food & Rural Affairs Committees

Should the UK be concerned about sugar?

This paper contributes to public debate about sugar, the ill-health consequences of which have rightly been highlighted in recent years. This and an accompanying paper seek to dovetail these public health concerns with other issues arising from and associated with the sugar industries. Sugar is a commodity with a long and troubled social history: slavery, colonialism, unequal trade relations, bad working conditions, heavy land use, pollution and other forms of environmental damage. On the other hand, it is a large employer, an economic lifeline for some small countries and many growers, and a considerable concern for the fair trade movement. The paper supports the public health concerns about unnecessary and rising consumption of sugar through processed foods and soft drinks, but mainly explores how these concerns can be squared with other interests championed by civil society organisations. It asks whether a progressive route can be charted through a potential minefield of conflicting interests

Multilayer approximation for a confined fluid in a slit pore

A simple Lennard-Jones fluid confined in a slit nanopore with hard walls is studied on the basis of a multilayer structured model. Each layer is homogeneous and parallel to the walls of the pore. The Helmholtz energy of this system is constructed following van der Waals-like approximations, with the advantage that the model geometry permits to obtain analytical expressions for the integrals involved. Being the multilayer system in thermodynamic equilibrium, a system of non-linear equations is obtained for the densities and widths of the layers. A numerical solution of the equations gives the density profile and the longitudinal pressures. The results are compared with Monte Carlo simulations and with experimental data for Nitrogen, showing very good agreement.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures

Does the CAP still fit?

The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) has evolved through various reforms since its outline in 1958 and formal inception in 1962. It has changed from a policy focused on farm production outputs to one focusing more on social, rural and environmental support. UK policy interest in the CAP is being shaped by the Referendum decision on whether or not to remain a part of the EU. To disentangle UK food and farm policy from that of European neighbours and then to re-establish workable trading links is not a small task. We argue that ideally the CAP would become a Common Sustainable Food Policy or Common Food Policy. This framework would help integrate farm and fisheries policies with diverse measures that are needed to reduce food’s impact on health, environment and social inequalities. Policy-makers at EU and national levels must help shift the food system to meet the needs of the 21st century. Some of CAP’s founding aims – for food security, affordability, health – remain appropriate today, although what is meant by those goals has altered since the CAP was mooted in the late 1950s. Written before the UK’s 2016 Referendum on EU membership, this paper argues that, whether the UK is in or out, the drive to more sustainable consumption and production needs to be an essential characteristic of the UK’s diet and supply chain. The UK like all EU member states needs to review its entire food system. At the EU level, a Common Food Policy would translate existing commitments to Sustainable Consumption and Production and help meet the new Sustainable Development Goals. The paper signals out some elements where new broader thinking is already emerging or being debated: animal welfare, water, public health, waste reduction and the commitment to the ‘circular economy’. Clearer political leadership and policy leverage is required to enable the structural shifts required. Civil society and academics can play an important role in creating the appropriate arguments, data and conditions for the transition that is sorely needed. Specifically, the paper explains how: • The CAP was first introduced over 50 years ago in response to post-war food insecurity and has been constantly changing over time. The latest reforms of 2013 began to take effect in 2015. • The 2013 reforms introduced a new greening element into the CAP in an effort to encourage sustainable production. Following from the 2000 reforms, payments under so-called Pillar 1 are now made on a per hectare basis rather than per unit of output. • Although considerably less than the 70% seen in the 1980s, the CAP now absorbs 40% of the EU budget. • The Directorate-General for Agriculture and Rural Development in Brussels has only 1,000 civil servants, yet accounts for over a third of the total EU budget. Defra in the UK has 2,000 for England alone. • In the UK, farmers receive only £10 billion of the £198 billion that UK consumers spend on food per year. Many farmers rely on the additional income from subsidies to keep them in farming. • The CAP has social, economic, health and environmental impacts, not all of which are beneficial. Perhaps most success in the UK has come in terms of environmental improvements, but there is still much to be done in this area. • Although the CAP has not impacted animal welfare directly, it does have indirect effects as the subsidies given to arable farming have allowed an increase in the intensive pig and poultry sectors. • Many problems are noted with the current CAP, which means it will need to radically change in the future. Four broad options about CAP’s purpose and preparations for the next phase of reform are explored in which CAP: (a) weakens significantly; (b) evolves pragmatically; (c) becomes a rural development policy; or (d) becomes a Common (Sustainable) Food Policy. The paper favours a Common Sustainable Food Policy that addresses current health crises and environmental costs. • Problems in the food and farming sectors remain whether the public votes to Brexit or Bremain on 23rd June. A Common Sustainable Food Policy will be relevant whatever the outcome

Liquid n-hexane condensed in silica nanochannels: A combined optical birefringence and vapor sorption isotherm study

The optical birefringence of liquid n-hexane condensed in an array of parallel silica channels of 7nm diameter and 400 micrometer length is studied as a function of filling of the channels via the vapor phase. By an analysis with the generalized Bruggeman effective medium equation we demonstrate that such measurements are insensitive to the detailed geometrical (positional) arrangement of the adsorbed liquid inside the channels. However, this technique is particularly suitable to search for any optical anisotropies and thus collective orientational order as a function of channel filling. Nevertheless, no hints for such anisotropies are found in liquid n-hexane. The n-hexane molecules in the silica nanochannels are totally orientationally disordered in all condensation regimes, in particular in the film growth as well as in the the capillary condensed regime. Thus, the peculiar molecular arrangement found upon freezing of liquid n-hexane in nanochannel-confinement, where the molecules are collectively aligned perpendicularly to the channels' long axes, does not originate in any pre-alignment effects in the nanoconfined liquid due to capillary nematization.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figure

Statistically designed experiments to screen chemical mixtures for possible interactions.

For the accurate analysis of possible interactive effects of chemicals in a defined mixture, statistical designs are necessary to develop clear and manageable experiments. For instance, factorial designs have been successfully used to detect two-factor interactions. Particularly useful for this purpose are fractionated factorial designs, requiring only a fraction of all possible combinations of a full factorial design. Once the potential interaction has been detected with a fractionated design, a more accurate analysis can be performed for the particular binary mixtures to ensure and characterize these interactions. In this paper this approach is illustrated using an in vitro cytotoxicity assay to detect the presence of mixtures of Fusarium mycotoxins in contaminated food samples. We have investigated interactions between five mycotoxin species (Trichothecenes, Fumonisins, and Zearalenone) using the DNA synthesis inhibition assay in L929 fibroblasts. First, a central composite design was applied to identify possible interactive effects between mycotoxins in the mixtures (27 combinations from 5(5) possible combinations). Then two-factor interactions of particular interest were further analyzed by the use of a full factorial design (5 x 5 design) to characterize the nature of those interactions more precisely. Results show that combined exposure to several classes of mycotoxins generally results in effect addition with a few minor exceptions indicating synergistic interactions. In general, the nature of the interactions characterized in the full factorial design was similar to the nature of those observed in the central composite design. However, the magnitude of interaction was relatively small in the full factorial design

D-Strings on D-Manifolds

We study the mechanism for appearance of massless solitons in type II string compactifications. We find that by combining $T$-duality with strong/weak duality of type IIB in 10 dimensions enhanced gauge symmetries and massless solitonic hypermultiplets encountered in Calabi-Yau compactifications can be studied perturbatively using D-strings (the strong/weak dual to type IIB string) compactified on ``D-manifolds''. In particular the nearly massless solitonic states of the type IIB compactifications correspond to elementary states of D-strings. As examples we consider the D-string description of enhanced gauge symmetries for type IIA string compactification on ALE spaces with $A_n$ singularities and type IIB on a class of singular Calabi-Yau threefolds. The class we study includes as a special case the conifold singularity in which case the perturbative spectrum of the D-string includes the expected massless hypermultiplet with degeneracy one.Comment: 23 pages, with 3 figures. A compact example is adde

Constraining the Kahler Moduli in the Heterotic Standard Model

Phenomenological implications of the volume of the Calabi-Yau threefolds on the hidden and observable M-theory boundaries, together with slope stability of their corresponding vector bundles, constrain the set of Kaehler moduli which give rise to realistic compactifications of the strongly coupled heterotic string. When vector bundles are constructed using extensions, we provide simple rules to determine lower and upper bounds to the region of the Kaehler moduli space where such compactifications can exist. We show how small these regions can be, working out in full detail the case of the recently proposed Heterotic Standard Model. More explicitely, we exhibit Kaehler classes in these regions for which the visible vector bundle is stable. On the other hand, there is no polarization for which the hidden bundle is stable.Comment: 28 pages, harvmac. Exposition improved, references and one figure added, minor correction