Defining 'high quality' for food production: Evidence review

1 Introduction

The Scottish Government’s Vision for Agriculture (Scottish Government, 2022a) states that Scotland will have “a support framework that delivers high quality food production, climate mitigation and adaption and nature restoration”.

The Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Bill seeks to provide the enabling powers to establish this new framework of support. The Bill primarily pertains to primary agriculture products, but not marine production and food products processed in Scotland that may or may not be from ingredients of Scottish origin.

Questions over what Scottish Government considers to be ‘high quality’ food were raised at recent Rural Affairs and Island Committee meetings (Scottish Government, 2023a, 2023b). A further meeting highlighted different interpretations of how high quality can be defined, with links to welfare standards, nutritional quality, whether the product supports the economy and provides value to the supply chain. No consensus over the definition of high quality was reached (Scottish Government, 2023c).

The purpose of this work is to identify:

• whether and how ‘high quality’ has been defined in the context of primary food production in the devolved nations (Scotland, England, Wales, and Northern Ireland), the UK (at a nation level), Ireland and the European Union
• if a definition is provided, the targets and indicators used to help define it.

This work contributes to building an evidence base for the use and meaning of the term high quality food production in a Scottish context and will later inform monitoring and evaluation work for the Agricultural Reform Programme.