Abstract: The food system has never been so successful when measured in terms of providing adequate and safe food at a reasonable price for a rapidly growing population. The roots of this success have been a mix of advances in agricultural practice, increasingly sophisticated processing, marketing and retail systems and government policies on science, education and business. Yet the underlying mantra of this success has been “food at any cost”, creating problems of the food system mining natural resources, affecting water and air quality and producing an obesogenic environment for consumers. How do we start to rebalance our food systems and bring them back into an ecological and regenerative form? The presentation will explore this through the negative environmental and public health externalities the food system creates, questioning whether these problems are adequately addressed in food pricing. Examples will be presented on the application of true cost accounting of food to explore these issues. The paper will argue that by replacing the current policy of “food at any cost” with a One Health approach it will be possible to shift the food system towards a more sustainable foundation.
Professor Jonathan Rushton is an agricultural economist who specialises in the economics of animal health and food systems. His principal research interests are the: Global Burden of Animal Diseases (GBADs) where he directs a global programme with WOAH (founded as OIE); economics of antimicrobial use and resistance in livestock; and assessment of the multidimensionality of food quality and public health. He is involved in the EU funded projects: ROADMAP on the economics and social sciences of antimicrobial use in livestock; and DECIDE on data-driven approached for the prioritisation and control of non-regulated diseases. Jonathan embraces One Health approaches in the search for solutions to society’s health problems. Jonathan is professor of animal health and food systems economics at the Institute of Infection, Veterinary and Ecological Sciences, University of Liverpool, leads a University Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Food Systems and is part of the N8 Agrifood programme. He is also adjunct Professor in the School of Behavioural, Cognitive & Social Sciences of the University of New England, Australia and founding president of the International Society for Economics and Social Sciences of Animal Health. In 2020 he became a Senior IIAD Fellow in Epidemiology at Texas A&M.
Chair: Rosemary Deininger, Member of the Crawford Fund Board and former Deputy Secretary, Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry