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9 NOVEMBER 2001
Lively discussion at London meeting
A wide range of topics from food safety to costs, from cooking to farming, were debated enthusiastically at the Food Standards Agency’s London Talkfood event.
Chaired by Newsnight presenter Jeremy Paxman, panellists FSA chairman Sir John Krebs, the food writer Prue Leith, National Farmers Union President Ben Gill, Lord Haskins, chairman of Northern Foods, Kevin Hawkins, Safeway’s communications director, and Baroness Barbara Young, chief executive of the Environment Agency, discussed farming and food with 400 people at the QEII Conference Centre.
Food safety
FSA chairman Sir John Krebs, reminded the audience that despite the current food scares, our food is 'probably safer, more varied and more affordable that it has ever been'.
'I think that there is a misunderstanding on the part of many people that the safety of food is linked to the kind of system in which it is produced,’ he added. ‘We are not going to get safer food by switching to a more extensive agriculture. The way to ensure our food’s safety is to have the right controls in place.'
Healthy eating
Ms Leith criticised Britons' 'ignorance about food and cooking' and said children should be taught how to cook cheap nutritious meals. She cited the results of a Bangor University project across 30 schools, which spent two weeks teaching children how to develop a taste for fruit and veg. By the end of the fortnight up to 80% had learnt to like them, she said – up from 10% at the start.
Farming
Barbara Young wants to see a 'good farming' seal of approval that would reflect good farming practice, including protecting the environment. This would justify the public subsidy farmers received, she suggested.
She told the audience about two farmers who helped spare Lincoln by allowing their land to absorb the worst of last winter’s floods. Such actions, she said, would stop the need for 'whacking great concrete walls' being built further downstream.
Cost
But Safeway communications director Kevin Hawkins said the supply chain between the farmer and retailers was too long and resulted in too much cost being added.
Lord Haskins, responding to a FSA poll which found that price was the factor that influenced food shoppers most, added: 'I would say value for money rather than price.
'When people talk about price they say what’s expensive to me would not be expensive to the Prince of Wales but would be expensive to someone in eastern Hull.'
Time to agree
But Lord Haskins warned that consensus needed to be reached. 'I find that in the last couple of months everybody in the countryside has been tearing each other’s eyes out,' he said. 'Nobody agrees about anything.
'Until we get some degree of consensus in the countryside about the issues the government isn’t going to go anywhere.'
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