Friday's Daily Mail suggests the Agency is ordering the country to go vegetarian to help reduce green house gases ('Go vegetarian, by order of Government food police'). This is after we published a report on Thursday into the implications of climate change on food policy.
We have made no such recommendations. In fact, we asked researchers to look at existing research on climate change and advise us on possible implications of the world’s changing weather patterns on food policy in the UK. This is all part of being a forward-looking, science-based organisation. We need to know what is on the horizon. And we will carefully review the report authors' conclusions before making any policy decisions – and of course all our policy decisions are discussed in open by the Board.
Our main concern is how climate change may affect food safety and this report gives us a better picture of what problems may occur and where we might need to respond in the future.
The report covers other areas of food policy, and will be a helpful resource for policy makers across Government. It could not, however, be called a mandate to force us all to be vegetarian. Please take a look at the report, and let us have your comments on what a reasonable reader might draw out as its main conclusions.