Recipe For Success: Scotland's national food and drink policy

Scotland's Food & Drink Policy

"Partnership action on food and drink which contributes to public health and economic gain is long overdue. The challenge of achieving healthy, sustainable consumption will not disappear. Identifying positive routes to actions now will help pave the way for future generations. The food and drink policy provides a starting framework for the direction of travel in the 21st century."
Professor Annie Anderson, University of Dundee

Monitoring our progress and measuring success

The Food and Drink Leadership Forum has been successful in bringing together some of the many different perspectives on food and drink. They have jointly set a challenging task for the nation and showed the value of open discussion and debate.

Monitoring progress and measuring success against the Food and Drink Policy vision is important.

To this end, we will invite a refocussed Leadership Forum to meet over the coming months to set specific, measurable and meaningful targets and ensure that all elements of the food and drink chain, including wider environmental and health interests, are involved in driving the policy forward.

The Leadership Forum will also be invited to explore the need for further advocacy on food to reflect this wide agenda.

Their conclusions will be set out at a national conference for those with an interest to discuss progress of the National Food and Drink Policy and map the way ahead. We expect this conference to be the first of many annual conferences that will become an international exemplar on proactive policy formulation and delivery.

Scotland's Fisheries Secretary, Richard Lochhead on a visit to Stornoway shows off some fresh caught langoustines.

Taking account of the Scottish Government's National Performance Framework

This policy supports the Scottish Government's National Performance Framework, specifically "to focus government and public services on creating a more successful country with opportunities for all of Scotland to flourish through increasing sustainable economic growth". In measuring this policy's success we will take into account the following Performance Indicators:

• Realise our full economic potential with more and better employment opportunities for our people;
• Result in our living longer, healthier lives;
• Tackle significant inequalities in Scottish society;
• Reduce the local and global environmental impact of our consumption and production; and
• Our young people are successful learners, confident individuals, effective contributors and responsible citizens.

Underpinning our future work through research

We have a proud heritage of excellence in basic through to applied scientific research supporting innovative businesses and economic prosperity and to this day have a science base which is one of the world's best. Our Strategic Framework for Science in Scotland and (soon to be published) Innovation for Scotland Framework set out what we will do in partnership to build on our world class science community and to use that strength innovatively to support growth in business and increase sustainable economic growth.

We currently support science and innovation in Scotland through a variety of routes with programme funding to our Main Research Providers (Macaulay, Moredun, and the Scottish Crop Research Institutes, together with the Rowett Institute for Nutrition and Health and the Scottish Agricultural College which together provide an excellent research base in crops, animals, soils, biodiversity and land use systems. These research organisations are helping to provide the evidence base to tackle global challenges such as climate change and food security.

There are excellent examples of where this research base has turned science into innovation with spin-off companies using the science to support new healthier, sustainable food products, but we can do more.

We will harness these skills of our science nation towards meeting the aims of our policy through the development of our Food Research Group which will advise us on how to maximise the contribution of our research outputs to aims of this policy in support of industry and wider food security goals. We will also recognise the continuing contribution of our Main Research Providers to the goals of the Food and Drink Policy as we develop our Research Strategy for 2011 to 2016.