Why isn’t the food industry preparing for Wes Streeting’s ‘steamroller’? | Comment and Opinion

Bother is, Kellogg’s has so efficiently recreated the chocolate cornflake cake expertise, it’s been compelled to concern a recall, after customers discovered laborious lumps of the cereal that had shaped wouldn’t break down when eaten with milk. As such, it’s been recognized as a choking hazard.

These absolutely received’t be the final laborious lumps Kellogg’s (and the meals trade typically) might be dealing with within the subsequent few months and years, nevertheless. With a brand new grocery store election ballot this week displaying Labour on track for a landslide victory amid overwhelming assist from consumers at each grocery store bar Waitrose, comes the prospect of a way more draconian authorities response to the weight problems disaster.

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And shadow well being secretary Wes Streeting singled out Kellogg’s Tony the Tiger as a probable casualty as he warned {that a} Labour authorities would “steamroll” a “extremely manipulative” meals trade into selling more healthy choices at a convention in February. As he memorably put it: “You both get on board the steamroller otherwise you’re going beneath it.”

How far will Streeting & co go? Business insiders anticipate Henry Dimbleby’s Nationwide Meals Technique to be the coverage blueprint for a cross-departmental weight problems technique, with the promise of necessary targets and new taxes.

That’s with out even contemplating what the federal government may do in regards to the new bête noire: ultra-processed meals (UPFs). Regardless of the problem in defining what UPF means, a brand new report for The Grocer this week finds strongly unfavourable sentiment in direction of UPFs from MPs on all sides of the Home and in each its chambers. Who is aware of what measures a decided authorities with a robust majority may introduce? But because the report says, the trade is “lacking in motion” in its response. If it’s not cautious it’s going to get squashed. Indiscriminately.