Food & Health Alliance

Workshop 3. Food advocacy

A wide range of food advocacy projects are taking place around Scotland but, workshop participants agreed, there is a need for much greater coordination between them.

Although advocacy supports a variety of people, organisations and communities, many called for a more joined up approach in which key messages were identified and shared to ensure they were fully effective.

The workshop examined three central issues: what was meant by food advocacy, what was actually happening and what needed to be happening.

There was general agreement that any definition needed to include a clear goal such as ‘improve health through better diets’ and should be based on sound evidence.

Advocacy was usually on behalf of individuals, groups or communities and, members agreed, should be focused on taking action or offering guidance to make changes. The targets would vary depend on the specific nature of the focus of the work.

Participants identified a wide range of organisations already undertaking food advocacy in Scotland. These included the FHA, the FSA Scotland, the consumers’ association Which? and the Sustainable Development Commission as well as more specialised projects such as Shine on Scotland and the Fife Diet.

Which?, for example, had been involved in representing the consumer voice over marketing of food to children (non broadcast), reformulation, front of pack labelling and the financial incentives to eat healthily through such initiatives as the ‘buy one get one free’ offers.

Equally Consumer Focus Scotland had been closely involved with the Healthy Living award, water quality in coolers, country of origin labelling, children’s diet, young people’s food safety knowledge, the UK nutritional strategy and Scores on the Doors, the national public information service which lists official local authority hygiene ratings for food businesses.

There were also many examples of partnership programmes, community level development and single issue campaigns such as animal welfare, fair trade, fluoridation and food waste reduction.

But despite – or possibly because of – the variety of activities much of the activity was taking place in a disjointed or short-term manner.

Participants wanted to see better integration of local and national campaigns as well as closer partnership between the NHS and councils.

Other suggestions included targeting messages to low income groups through schools and local communities and having a Scottish voice in the EU and internationally.

At the end participants felt they had only scratched the surface. In particular, they wanted more attention paid to:

• How the various initiatives identified were using and implementing advocacy
• Who was doing what in each topic and geographic area
• What approach and resources would be appropriate to achieving better co-ordination?