Ben Keeley, MSc Food and Nutrition Policy, Centre for Food Policy, City University London.
This dissertation explores why and how a re-emergence of public health has occurred on the European agricultural agenda. It considers the emergent role of public health lobbyists; identifying who is appearing in the debates, what narrative is deployed, and whether their arguments are influencing European agricultural policies, including the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). It identifies the successes and failures of public health interest groups over the last decade, quantifying the extent to which their arguments are realised in the EU policy-making process, and assesses the space that is emerging for public health.
In the context that current supply outputs are generating widespread chronic ill-health, this paper takes the argument that if consumption problems of food - such as excessive intake of Saturated Fatty Acids (SFA) or under-consumption of vitamins and minerals - are to be addressed, then it must be met at the production and primary processing stages. To illustrate this, and to see how it is being addressed, this research looks at the emergence of the public health dimension in the reforms of European agricultural policies through interest groups.
The research identified that public health has had some gains in framing policy discourse to inject health in European agricultural policies, but progress has been incremental and not solely attributable to the influence of public health interest groups.
Although the nutritional issues have remained off the agricultural agenda with the Directorate General (DG) for Agriculture and Rural Development (AGRI) demonstrating reluctance to formally accept the public health nutrition implications of CAP policies, some recent evidence from EU policy documents and conference proceedings suggest there is a tacit re-emergence that public health ought to be an objective of agricultural policy. These developments have been accompanied by an increasingly vocal lobby that has changed and adapted its narrative and lobbying strategy to become a constructive partner to the various EU arenas.
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