Christine Watts, AHDB Chief Communications and Market Development Officer, said: “We welcome publication of the National Food Strategy and a number of the recommendations highlighted, particularly improved food education in schools.
“Education forms a key part of our reputation work, helping to ensure that we have informed consumers of tomorrow. The Food – a fact of life (FFL) programme, in partnership with the British Nutrition Foundation (BNF), covers three fundamental areas of education – where food comes from, cooking skills and healthy eating.
“Via the FFL we trained more than 1,000 trainee and practising teachers in 2020/21 through our conferences, webinars and workshop, reaching more than half a million pupils. Post-event evaluation showed 91% of teachers have used our training to update their lessons and our resources were downloaded more than 1.5 million times.
“I feel it’s important we recognise that meat continues to have an important role in our nutritional health and can be enjoyed as part of a healthy, balanced and sustainable diet, which has been underlined by our We Eat Balanced campaign. Pivotal to this are our farmers who are united in their ambition to bring high-quality, naturally nutrient-rich produce to people and are continuously driving towards a carbon-neutral food industry with high welfare standards at its heart.
“We also welcomed one of the key recommendations that in order to improve farming the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB), has piloted the development of what works centre for agriculture in the form of the Evidence for Farming Initiative (EFI).
“We have been piloting the development of an EFI that is a What Works for Agriculture (WWA) centre aimed at helping farmers and growers to work towards net zero carbon emissions. We plan to complete the review of the feedback for the pilot phase and to seek further funding to upscale the project so that it can cover more than just net zero. This is an exciting initiative for the future.”
