Health secretary Jeremy Hunt held talks with supermarket bosses and leading suppliers this week in a bid to allay fears over government proposals for a system of voluntary sugar reduction targets across nine food categories.
All the major supermarkets, leading suppliers and a raft of campaign groups took part in the meeting, hosted by Public Health England in London, which comes in the wake of huge criticism over the Childhood Obesity Plan, published in August.
Hunt is understood to have stressed the government will do all it can to ensure a level playing field in the proposals, so that the out-of-home sector, including restaurants, cafés, pubs and takeaways, take part.
With a 5% cut targeted for 2017, PHE unveiled plans for a programme of roundtable meetings with the industry starting this month to decide how monitoring and the publication of “transparent data” will work.
PHE said in parallel it would continue work to meet the existing salt reduction targets for 2017, formed under the Responsibility Deal. Later in 2017 it is promising to develop targets for an overall reduction programme for calories. Further plans for targets on satfats are subject to the outcome of the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition review on satfats, also due next year.
Public Health England chief executive Duncan Selbie said it would publish regular progress reports, which the government will use to decide if other levers, including mandatory targets or a possible extension of the sugar levy to other sectors, are needed.
The BRC, which previously said the Childhood Obesity Plan would fail without mandatory targets, said the government needed “full and equal participation” across every part of the food industry.
“In recent years, progressive retailers have found themselves at a competitive disadvantage against those companies that have been slower to reformulate, which is why we had previously called for sugar targets to be mandatory rather than voluntary,” said BRC director of food and sustainability Andrew Opie. “The government must now show real leadership in getting every single food company to play its part.”
Meanwhile, suppliers at the meeting are understood to have warned of the huge technical barriers involved, with the industry being asked to remove 20% of the sugar from the categories involved by 2020.
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