- Home
- Food and farming
- Food
- What is Defra doing?
Food and drink: What is Defra doing?
Secure and sustainable food
Key policy launched on secure and sustainable food on 10th August 2009.
There is a food dimension to many areas of public policy, for example, health, nutrition, food safety, food hygiene, farming, competition, planning, food security and international development.
In 2008, the Cabinet Office Strategy Unit published a report looking at long-term trends in food production and consumption. Their report concluded that there are major challenges in the food system and set out the need to tackle the health and social impacts of food consumption, including obesity and diet-related ill health, and ensuring that food production does not have a detrimental effect on the environment, such as its contribution to climate change.
These are big challenges, and tackling them requires co-ordinated effort across Government, for Government to work effectively with the food industry, and for Government to engage with consumers. Within Government, responsibility for various food-related policies is distributed among different Government Departments (see below). Defra has a key role in co-ordinating efforts on food across Government, as well as driving forward policies of its own.
Policy responsibilities across Government & Organisations
- UK Food Security – Defra
- Climate change – Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC)
- Environmental impacts of food production and consumption – Defra
- Food and food packaging waste – Defra
- Obesity – Department of Health (DH)
- Diet-related ill health – DH
- Nutrition – Food Standards Agency (FSA)
- Food safety and hygiene – FSA
- Food production - Defra
- Public sector food procurement – OGC, DH, Defra
- Planning – Communities and Local Government (CLG)
- Competition – BIS, Competition Commission, Office of Fair Trading
- International development – Department for International Development (DFID)
Page last modified: 11 November 2009
Page published: 21 July 2009