Food Research Collaboration

Public health as a ‘public good’ from agriculture. How can we win support for this principle from UK policy makers?
2018-07-11 14:00 - 17:00 UTC | Food Research Collaboration, City, University of London. Northampton Square, London, EC1V 0HB, United Kingdom
Half-day seminar, 2pm-5pm, Wednesday 11th July 2018, at City, University of London

According to the Defra consultation document Health and Harmony, the rubric of ‘Public money for public goods’ will be the ‘cornerstone’ of agriculture policy after the UK leaves the EU. The Food Research Collaboration at the Centre for Food Policy at City, University London, is working with the Sustain food and farming alliance and the Royal Society for Public Health to explore the grounds for including public health as one of the public goods that should be supported under the new UK Agriculture Act, as well as being cited as a ‘purpose’ of the Act. Support might include increased fruit and vegetable production and reduced sugar production; safer and better jobs in food and farming; and whole-farm approaches to integrated health and sustainability, for example.
Examples of public goods floated in the Health and Harmony paper include improved soil, water and air quality, public access to nature, ‘enhanced beauty’ and bee health. Human health, however, is not included except as an indirect benefit of clean air and water, access to green space and controlled use of farm antibiotics and pesticides.
Explicit integration of public health seems a serious omission, given that the self-evident primary purpose of agriculture is to provide the food necessary for health; and that agricultural policy has enormous potential either to support or undermine public health, with significant related benefits or costs to human well-being and the economy. Indeed, Defra Secretary of State Michael Gove has himself stated this in recent speeches. It may also be the case that if public health is not asserted now as a valid criterion in deciding which purposes agricultural policy should support, it risks being ‘defined out’ of future debate. This will inevitably jeopardise efforts to achieve more coherent farming, food and health policy.
This half-day seminar will examine the question: ‘Public health as a ‘public good’ from agriculture: How can we win support for this principle from UK policy makers?’ The seminar will be highly collaborative, with attendees encouraged to take an active part. We aim to develop and publish a rationale for including public health front-and-centre among the public goods to be supported by the new UK Agriculture Act. We believe this would be a significant step for integrated public policy.
RSVP to: Lindy Sharpe, Food Research Collaboration: contact@foodresearch.org.uk

Seminar convened by Lindy Sharpe, Food Research Collaboration; Kath Dalmeny and Vicki Hird of Sustain; and Shirley Cramer, Royal Society for Public Health. Kath and Shirley are also commissioners for the RSA’s Food, Farming and Countryside Commission and this seminar will inform their response to this and other processes.

IFSTAL Showcase - Food for thought
2018-07-12 10:00 - 16:00 | IFSTAL, Oxford Town Hall, Oxford, OX1 1BX, United Kingdom
IFSTAL SHOWCASE
‘FOOD FOR THOUGHT’
12th July 2018, 10am-4pm at the Oxford Town Hall

IFSTAL is unique. It brings together academic minds in food systems thinking with the workplace to create an inter-disciplinary, workplace-orientated model to build the community of future researchers, practitioners, campaigners, and advocates for change: ‘food system analysts’.
This showcase event will be an opportunity to share and discuss experiences of a multi-institution collaboration for interdisciplinary teaching and learning. With a focus on the food system, it will highlight IFSTAL activities over the past 3 years as a case study by:

Explaining the motivation for the programme – the challenges of the global food system now and in the future and need to skill up the workplace
Reviewing the method and learning in the programme – the development of the programme, innovative approaches to student engagement, use of the Virtual Learning Environment, and building workplace contacts
Demonstrating workplace pull and the value of our teaching and learning method to the workplace
Reflecting on the value to students and to enhance employability for students in a competitive job market
Celebrating the collaborative approach provided by HEFCE (now the Office for Students), partner institutions and the workplace

Speakers Include:

John Ingram, University of Oxford
Alan Hayes, IGD
Angela Wright, Compassion of World Farming
Helen Munday, FDF
Tim Lang, City, University of London
Lucy Foster, Defra
Matt Jennings, Office for Students

Who should attend?

Higher education under- and post-graduate course directors, educational technologists, career officers, education policy staff;
Food industry – HR managers (CPD), strategy and policy staff;
NGOs – HR managers (CPD), policy and strategy staff;
Government departments – policy and strategy staff;
Funders;
Professional and trade bodies; and
IFSTAL alumni

https://www.oxforduniversitystores.co.uk/product-catalogue/environmental-change-institute/eci-events

Food Thinkers: Preference: the missing ingredient in food policy
2018-09-26 17:30 - 19:00 | City, University of London, Northampton Square, London, EC1V 0HB, United Kingdom
Preference: the missing ingredient in food policy
With Bee Wilson – food writer, journalist and historian
Chaired by Professor Corinna Hawkes, Centre for Food Policy, City, University of London
The Centre for Food Policy’s Food Thinkers series aims to advance the thinking and practice of integrated approaches to food policy.

The likes and dislikes populations have about food – reinforced by habit and mediated by food prices – are one of the greatest reasons anyone eats something. Bee will present some of the mechanisms through which human preferences are formed; and how they can change throughout the human lifespan.
The seminar will consider a few examples of whole populations either changing their food preferences in a healthier direction, encouraged by food policy (Japan) or retaining traditional preferences in the wake of the nutrition transition (South Korea).
Bee will also draw on and share her experience of involvement with a new charity called Flavour School which is using the Sapere method of sensory education pioneered in Scandinavia to help children in the UK develop new and more varied preferences for fruits and vegetables among other foods.
This will be followed by Q&A and discussion with the audience.
Bee Wilson
Bee Wilson is a food writer, journalist and historian. She is the author of several books including First Bite: How We Learn to Eat and Consider the Fork: a history of how we cook and eat. Her next book, due out next year, is about the nutrition transition.
She writes for a wide range of newspapers including The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal and The London Review of Books. She is the chair of Flavour School, a new charity offering a programme of sensory food education to primary school children in the U.K.
