Views from Holyrood...
| Published: 18th January 2008 17:51 |
With Malcolm Chisholm, MSP Edinburgh North & Leith
January is traditionally the time when many of us make resolutions to cut out our bad habits, improve our wellbeing and eat better, healthier foods. But as we fill our trollies with fruit and veg, how many of us actually think about how far our food has travelled, what it contains and whether the producers have been given a fair deal?
A new consultation has been launched to encourage us to do just that and the challenge for the Scottish Government is to create a joined up food policy which takes into account health benefits, accessibility of good food, and the impact of food production and distribution on the environment.
As a starting point, we should put the links between health and food at the heart of our agenda. Too many households simply do not have access to local shops or supermarkets that sell affordable fresh fruit and vegetables. Food cooperatives can be an important part of the answer but there is no substitute for local shops that are near housing.
Labour's Hungry for Success initiative which I launched five years ago when I was Health Minster has made a real difference to school children through promoting healthier school meals. |Moreover the measures on free fruit in the early years of primary school, fresh water and breakfast clubs are all about promoting access to healthy food for children and young people who otherwise would simply not have access to those choices.
The debate is not just about food for our schools: more action is needed for our hospitals and care homes too. The trade union Unison has done a huge amount of work promoting a food policy that incorporates our public health sector. I am very much signed up to this public sector food policy which should have higher standards of nutrition at its heart.
What we eat is only one part of the equation: where we get our food is quite another. Protecting our environment and tackling climate change should be central to our food policy. Carbon footprint pilots carried out by WWF and local authorities have demonstrated that food is a major contributor to the carbon footprint of local authorities. We can tackle that area in Scotland. If we build it into our food policy we can bring about serious reductions in our CO2 emissions.
Such an approach would also go some way towards supporting local producers and maintaining a vibrant local economy. The challenge to Government is to follow a local sourcing agenda, giving particular consideration to the Soil Association's proposals on fresh and organic food in schools. Our focus must be on access and affordability, environmental sustainability and the sustainability of our local economies. We are not starting from scratch and there is a lot of agreement. The Scottish Government should not only get the policy in place as soon as possible but also get results from the policy.
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