FOOD POLICY

Packaging Food Commodities: Policy Development

Food Policy



Packaging Food Commodities: Policy Development

Food Policy

Introduction

The Introduction identified three interacting parts of food policy: nutrition policy, food safety policy and policies ensuring that food supplies are plentiful and widely distributed. This paper examines the adequacy, availability and sustainability of the supply of safe and nourishing food. More attention is being paid to how food production policies affect food safety and nutrition. Agricultural policies that emphasize high production may increase the quantity of food produced but not necessarily the quality of the diet - in terms of its biochemical diversity, nutritional adequacy or safety. Policy-makers are looking at the upstream sources of problems in the food supply. This paper looks in more detail at these issues, the trends in production and the evidence for a concordance between ecologically sustainable supplies and healthy diets.

Policy Development

Food Security

Sometimes confused with food safety, the term food security means ensuring that all members of a population have access to a supply of food sufficient in quality and quantity, regardless of their social or economic status. A secure food supply satisfies the consumer's needs without jeopardizing the production process in the short or long term. It ensures the sustainability of supplies while considering the safety of the methods of production and the nutritional suitability of the food produced. In addition, food security means that everyone always has both physical and economic access to enough food for an active, healthy life. The concept encompasses the following principles.

The ways in and means by which food is produced and distributed respect the natural processes of the earth and are thus sustainable.

Both the production and consumption of food are grounded in and governed by social values that are just and equitable as well as moral and ethical.

The ability to acquire food is assured.

The food itself is nutritionally adequate and personally and culturally acceptable.

The food is obtained in a manner that upholds human dignity.

Food Production and Health Policies

In the early to mid-20th century, food policy focused on two sets of factors: those affecting the capacity to increase food output and those ensuring adequate food distribution. To the extent that public health policies were concerned with food production, the objectives were to increase the abundance of food and to improve access to it throughout the population, primarily in response to the prevailing deficiency diseases and outright hunger among lower-income households. Both WHO and FAO, which were established in the reconstruction period following the Second World War, adopted these approaches. Food was supposed to be plentiful and cheap.

In the latter half of the 20th century, diseases linked to nutrient deficiency were being replaced by those linked to nutrient or dietary imbalances, especially in Western Europe Public policy emphasized health education and the distribution of messages to encourage individuals to alter their eating and other lifestyle patterns: encouraging healthier choices. Few attempts were made to review strategies for producing and distributing food. More recently, food production policies have begun to be ...