By Frances Harris

"Values for money", rather than value for money, should be the new focus of food policy in the UK, Professor Tim Lang told the BA Festival of Science today.

Food policy in Britain has been focussed on ensuring food supplies at low cost for too long, he said. He argued that these food choices have an impact on the environment, our own health and social justice issues such as fair trade and animal welfare.

Tim Lang is Professor of Food Policy at City University, London.

He argued that we now face a global food crisis, evidenced by low global grain stores, and rapidly increasing food prices. This comes at a time when populations are not only rising quickly, but developing a more complex diet in which meat increasingly replaces grain, and agricultural land is also under pressure to meet demands for biofuels.

In the UK, there has been a shift away from intensive farming to agri-environmental schemes which encourage farmers to reduce the intensity of agricultural production and save biodiversity through leaving field margins for wildlife.

Professor Lang cited 10 fundamental challenges facing the food industry, including increasing energy prices, global shortages of water, climate change, population increase, competing land use pressures and dietary change.

Under these circumstances, he said, there needs to be a shift from considering food in terms of its cost, to considering the values embedded in its production.

Lang, who coined the term "food miles", is now suggesting that we should be uniting around "Omni-standards": criteria which should underpin our food production, distribution and consumption.

These include consideration of food quality (whether fresh, local, seasonal or from a sustainable source), social justice (animal welfare, fair-trade, ethical labour conditions), environment (embedded carbon and water, eco-footprints, organic or conventional production), health (nutritional benefits, food safety), affordability and accessibility.

Lang suggested foods could be rated according to these criteria, and interested consumers could look on websites to unravel the omni-standard rating of each food product.

Achieving working system of omni-standards will require a more joined-up approach to food policy in the UK, he said. Scientists and social scientists will need to work together with those throughout the industry, from farmers, importers, food retailers, and government bodies such as the DEFRA, the Food Standards Agency, all the way up to the Cabinet Office, to put a workable system together.

The result could point to a new way forward in for food policy and food consumption in Britain.