Global Feedback Ltd v Secretary of State for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (challenge to the Food Strategy)

In June 2022 the UK government published its Food Strategy. According to the government the strategy “will help ensure we deliver our ambition for a prosperous agri-food sector, and that healthier and more sustainable diets can be achieved by all”. The Strategy was challenged on public law grounds by Global Feedback, a campaigning organisation concerned with a sustainable food system. Both the independent review of the National Food Strategy written by Henry Dimbleby and commissioned by the government in 2019 and the UK Climate Change Committee (CCC) have identified substantial reductions in meat and dairy as essential to tackle climate change. Feedback argued that the government’s failure to incorporate this advice, in particular the CCC’s recommendations, or explain why it opted to not adopt their expert recommendations was unlawful. In December 2022, the High Court refused permission for the claim to proceed to trial. However in June 2023 the Court of Appeal reversed that decision and heard the claim in October 2023. At issue is whether section 13 of the Climate Change Act 2008 (the duty to prepare proposals and policies for meeting the UK carbon budgets) was engaged with the adoption of the Food Strategy. The judgement handed down in December 2023 dismissed the claim for judicial review, ruling that the Secretary of State for Environment and Food and Rural Affairs was under no obligation to develop policies to reduce emissions in food and farming within the government’s Food Strategy. The court considered the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero’s duty under section 13 of the Climate Change Act 2008 to be economy wide and not to be divided amongst the secretaries of state for different government departments. The adoption of the food strategy by the environment secretary was not therefore an activity caught by section 13. A second question was, when adopting the Food Strategy, did either secretary of state need to be aware of, give significant weight to, and give cogent reasons for departing from, the advice of the Climate Change Committee on diet and climate change? Because the court found section 13 did not apply, this second question did not arise. However the Court nonetheless considered it, coming to the clear conclusion that the law does not impose these duties.