Annual Review 2010: Promoting a British Success Story
Health and wellbeing: spotlight on public health
Our health and wellbeing work in 2010 was dominated
by the impact of the General Election as policy and
dialogue was effectively 'on hold' in the run-up to the
election. The arrival of a coalition government – and
the appointment of Andrew Lansley as Secretary of
State for Health after a number of years shadowing
the role – signalled a new approach to government
working in partnership with industry which FDF has
welcomed and embraced.
The new Government also implemented a major
machinery of government change, bringing nutrition
policy in England fully within DH and refocusing the
FSA on food safety. FDF supported this change as
bringing greater coherence to the policy debate and
our good working relationships with offi cials helped us
to continue to represent members effectively during a
period of change.
A major plank of the Government's public health
policy is the Responsibility Deal between government
and industry. Thanks to the productive relationship
FDF had already built with Andrew Lansley, we
were aware of the likely approach, and the Health
and Wellbeing Steering Group was able to build a
convincing response from FDF members in the period
following the election before the fi rst meeting of the
Responsibility Deal Board in August. A number of FDF
representatives, including Director General Melanie
Leech and Health and Wellbeing Steering Group Chair
Fiona Dawson, were invited to join the Board, and the
Food Network (one of fi ve strands of work under the
Deal). FDF was also well represented on two other
Networks – Health at Work and Behaviour Change.
The Food Network focused on three initial pledges:
dealing with salt reduction, the elimination of artifi cial
trans fatty acids (TFAs) and out of home calorie
labelling. FDF was heavily involved in helping to frame
these pledges in a way which would both deliver
substantial public health benefi ts and enable as
wide a range of companies as possible to sign up.
26 FDF members signed the Responsibility Deal at
its launch in early 2011: 18 signed the pledge on salt
reduction; 22 on TFAs and 6 on calorie labelling in out
of home settings. In addition 22 FDF members signed
health at work pledges and 17 members signed
pledges on physical activity. FDF itself also signed
the Responsibility Deal including a physical activity
pledge.
The next phase of work under the Food Network
will focus on calorie reduction and on improving
consumption of fruit and vegetables. Again FDF is
well prepared to play a constructive role in these
discussions. We will also continue to highlight the
challenges of delivering the salt reduction pledge
– leading with the British Retail Consortium a
working group to look at technical and consumer
acceptance issues, sharing good practice, developing
recommendations for out of home settings and raising
awareness of the challenges of salt reduction.
FDF also remained very active in Europe – supporting
our sister European federation CIAA and directly
working to represent our members' interests in
relation to the continuing discussions on a new Food
Information Regulation. These discussions should
finally be resolved in 2011.
Next page: The environment: building on success
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