Reducing urban
hunger (pdf file size=101KB) in Ontario: policy responses to support the transition from food charity to local food security.
In the past 15 years, our perceptions of food banks have changed dramatically. First seen by policy makers and the general public as an emergency, short-term and caring response to what was supposed to be a time-limited hunger problem, they are now viewed, at least implicitly and often reluctantly, as one of the cornerstones of society's anti-hunger and anti-poverty strategy. Although there is much talk about eliminating the need for them, concrete strategies to effect such an outcome remain elusive.
In this discussion paper we present an evolutionary series of policy initiatives designed to reduce the need for food banks. These initiatives recognize both the government's fiscal dilemmas and the responsibility of many sectors of society for both the current problem and the potential solutions.
January 1995 - pages: 45
Health, wealth and the environment: (pdf file size=72KB) the impacts of the CUSTA, GATT and NAFTA on Canadian food security.
Little attention has been given to the effect of trade arrangements (CUSTA, NAFTA, GATT) on Canadian food security issues, particularly for large urban areas such as Metro Toronto. Food security exists when all citizens have access to an appropriate, affordable and nourishing diet.
The pillars that underlie food security are equitable wealth generation, environmentally sustainable food production and community health promotion. Each of these pillars is rooted in specific principles and conditions. These principles and conditions are being undermined by the trade arrangements. In concrete terms, this means that we are likely to see increasing levels of hunger and food insecurity, increasing degradation of the natural resources on which food production is based, and decreased individual and community health.
It will require significant efforts on the part of advocates for change and their institutional allies to create a food system and trading regime that promote food security. It is our view that current trade agreements so compromise food security that they must be abrogated and eliminated. Then new systems must be put in place that respect the foundation principles of food security: equitable wealth generation, environmental sustainability and the health of communities.
August 94 - pages: 27
If the Health (pdf file size=83KB) Care System Believed You are What You Eat: strategies to integrate our food and health systems.
"You are what you eat". It's such a well-known dictum, yet strangely, we have designed both our food and health systems as if we had never actually heard it before.
Diet is a significant risk factor in 60% of diseases. These diseases affect both the food-rich (those with sufficient income to acquire whatever foods they desire) and the food-poor (or those experiencing food insecurity). Very significant percentages of the Ontario population are at risk of these diseases because they do not eat in a manner optimal for health.
Society pays, through publicly-funded health insurance, for the costs of individuals' poor food choices or hunger. The food system, through which most people acquire food, carries no responsibility for the consequences of consumption of its products.
The evidence is overwhelming that a diet rich in complex carbohydrates, fruits and vegetables and moderate in protein and fat is healthy for most people. Neither the food nor the health care systems are properly structured to reflect this reality. This paper provides an evolutionary series of policy and program initiatives to progressively integrate the food and health systems.
November1997 - pages: 75
Setting a new direction: (pdf file size=83KB) changing the agricultural policy making process.
The Toronto Food Policy Council has undertaken an investigation of the Canadian agricultural policy making system. It is our view that the current policy making system does not adequately meet the needs of both urban consumers and agricultural producers.
Agriculture has been enormously productive in recent decades. The main problem is that fragmentation of issues, knowledge and responsibilities has hidden the costs associated with this success. The FPC wants to shift attention to the need for regulation of the agrofood system of the 1990s in a comprehensive way. We believe that the future lies in reorienting agricultural policy away from maximum production and towards nourishment, food security and sustainability.
These problems are elaborated in this paper through four case studies: the process of licensing recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH); the development of policy to protect Intellectual Property Rights; the provision of full information on food to consumers, and the existing Federal Fertilizers Act.
April 1995 - pages: 40
Stories of Micro (pdf file size=1,335KB) Food Enterprises and Implications for Economic Development.
This discussion paper outlines some of the current thinking on the links between
on-farm processing and economic development, and the strategies
many entrepreneurs are using to build successful businesses.
14 case studies are presented involving a range of commodities,
circumstances, markets and geography. Barriers to their
development are also discussed. We also examine current
government efforts to support this economic activity and
additional actions that could be undertaken to make it
a more vibrant economic sector.
October 1995 - pages: 42
Cutting Out the Fat: (pdf file size=107KB) Food and Agriculture Policies, Programs, Regulations and Pricing Mechanisms that Promote the Production and Distribution of Fat in our Food System.
Consuming fat is essential to a healthy diet, yet concern about the amount and type of fat in the Canadian diet continues to grow. Excess fat consumption is linked to a host of diseases including cancer and heart disease.
Fat consumption remains above recommended guidelines, and there is little indication population averages will fall rapidly in the short term. We believe that current approaches, rooted primarily in individual lifestyle modification strategies, have reached the limits of their success. The reasons for excessive fat consumption are complex, and include such factors as fast-paced lifestyles, 2-person working families, increasing promotion of convenience, the manipulation of consumer taste, loss of food preparation skills and knowledge, and the structure of the food economy. It is particularly on this last factor that we concentrate in this discussion paper. We believe that additional reductions in fat consumption will come primarily from systemic changes to the way we produce, process and distribute foods.
May 1998 - Pages: 44
Food (pdf file size=87KB) Retail Structure and Food Security.
The failure of Canadian social and economic systems has resulted in increased hunger and the demand for alternative food distribution projects in Toronto, some charity based (foodbanks) and some based on a community development model. The existence of these alternative food sources is indicative of public policy and market failure. How does the dominate food retail system contribute to this failure? Is the dominant food retail system concerned about low-income citizens? This discussion paper is the result of these enquiries.
December 1996 - Pages: 32
Making Consumers Sovereign: (pdf file size=147KB) How to change food information systems so food shoppers are the informed consumers governments and businesses say they should be.
As a result, consumers get information that is incomplete, and which may contradict the information provided by another firm or government agency.
Government rules confound this problem because there is also little coherence between the parts and levels of government that have responsibility for advertising rules, labelling and grading systems. This paper makes recommendations on overhauling an antiquated system for providing consumers with information about food.
September 1998 - Pages: 50
Recombinant (pdf file size=125KB) Bovine Growth Hormone.
Recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH) ha for a decade been a very controversial product. Although not yet licensed for use in Canada, its costs and benefits have the subject of much debate among farmers, dairy processors, public health authorities and consumers. Proponents of the drug have claimed it can increase milk production in many cows and provide farmers with more management options. Critics believe the drug poses human and animal health problems, and that its widespread use will cause a significant and undesirable restructuring of the Canadian dairy sector.
It is the view of many in the agriculture and health sector that the licensing and non-therapeutic use of rbGH will not conform with both established scientific procedures or government policies, rules and regulations that give direction to the Canadian dairy sector. Consequently, dramatic changes to such procedures and policies would be required to bring them into compliance with the new realities imposed by rbGH licensing.
This paper expresses the fundamental flaws of the regulatory system mandated to evaluate the change.
August 1997 - pages: 44
The Canadian Regulatory (pdf file size=363KB) Process, For Evaluating Recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone in the Dairy Industry: A Critical Review.
Many people heaved a sigh of relief when Health Canada safeguarded milk's reputation in 1999 by refusing to license one brand of recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH), a genetically-engineered hormone designed to make cows produce more milk than their normally-inherited abilities allowed. Once this dramatic and high-profile decision was made and the spotlight faded, there was a drop-off in policy analysis governing Health Canada regulation of milk. But taking the regulation of milk's purity for granted is not a good way to treat the protective inheritance from over a hundred years' painstaking work by dairy farmers and public health officials.
We trust that this paper will stimulate informed debate on the regulation of genetically-engineered foods, and help ground future regulatory processes and decisions in the wisdom accumulated by public health and environmental scientists as well as by farmers, food workers and entrepreneurs.
September 2000 - pages: 122
Is
Food the Next Public Health Challenge?
(pdf file size=97KB)
Although food has always been a part of the public health
agenda, a growing body of evidence suggests that health
authorities have not devoted sufficient resources to this
area, relative to the health risks associated with poor,
nutrition, hunger, and food contaminants.
Today's major public health challenges and health care
costs are related to such chronic diseases and conditions
as cardiovascular disease, hypertension, stress, cancer,
diabetes, low birthweight infants, obesity and anaemia,
all of which are associated with inadequate nutrition. In
particular, excess fat intake and/or insufficient consumption
of fibre, fruits and vegetables are linked with such diseases.
It estimated that 71% of deaths, including more than one-third
of cancer deaths, fall into disease categories, which have
strong associations with diet.
September 1997 - pages: 40
A
Wealth
(pdf file size=83KB)
of Food: A Profile of Toronto's Food Economy.
This report looks at the food economy of the City of Toronto.
Ten percent of all jobs and 14% of all businesses are in
this sector. Food processing is especially strong and has
a very high positive multiplier impact on jobs and commerce.
The report has tables of job numbers in several sub-sectors.
The report does not have recommendations, but points to
the importance of the Food Economy to any consideration
of the City and it's future.
January 1999 - pages: 14
Food
Secure
(pdf file size=116KB)
City - TFPC Submission to the Toronto Official Plan.
The new City needs a new Official Plan (OP) in 2000, and
the Toronto Food Policy Council has prepared a draft submission
for the OP called Food Secure City. Urban planning must
recognize that the food system is an important component
of the urban system. We want the city to adopt a holistic
approach to improving our food security over a 50-year time
span. Increasing access to healthy, nutritious food improves
the urban system through lower health care costs and greater
human productivity. This is an economic reinvestment in
our future. We recommend that the City adopt full cost accounting
(economic, environmental and social) as a primary evaluation
tool for all City planning projects.
February 2000 - pages: 41
Feeding
(pdf file size=98KB)
the City from the Back 40: A Commercial Food Production
Plan for the City of Toronto.
TFPC has completed a report looking at urban agriculture
as a cutting edge policy development issue for the new
millennium. Feeding the City from the Back 40:A Commercial
Food Production Plan for Toronto, was generated in response
to a request by the Environmental Task Force (ETF), to
include food as a key sector of environmental action in
the city. We have submitted it as part of the Environmental
Plan and the Official Plan.
November 1999 - pages: 36
The Way
(pdf file size=267KB)
to a City's Heart is Through its Stomach: Putting Food Security on the Urban Planning Menu.
From public health to job creation to community development: food and food security are central to the well-being of cities. Curiously, city planners barely discuss these issues at all.
This discussion paper reviews a draft version of Toronto's official plan through a food security lens. The critique proposes major changes in the plan in ten areas that bear on food security and urban development. The discussion paper also serves as an introduction to all the policy implications of food and food security, many of which are neglected because food is marginalized as a public policy issue.
June 2001 - pages: 59
For more information, contact:
Toronto Food Policy Council
277 Victoria Street, Suite 203
Toronto, Ontario M5B 1W1
Lauren Baker
Phone: 416-338-8154
Fax: 416-392-1357
E-mail:
tfpc@toronto.ca
