SDC announces new date and venue for its 2008 lecture series

Professor Tim Lang, Commissioner for Natural Resources and Land Use, kick starts the Sustainable Development Commission’s 2008 lecture series when he delivers the inaugural address, titled ‘The Rapidly Changing World of Food’, at 6.30pm on Thursday 29th May 2008 in the Peter Frogget Centre, Queen's University Belfast.

We would ask you to please confirm your place by emailing: eimer.o’hare@ofmdfmni.gov.uk

Professor Lang will examine how the production and retail of food is inextricably linked to many of the toughest sustainable development challenges faced by today’s population – from obesity and climate change to waste and global poverty. His lecture will explore the responsibility of supermarkets and governments in supporting sustainable food systems.

Tim Lang, the man who coined the term ‘food miles’, is Professor of Food Policy at City University’s Centre for Food Policy which specialises in how public and private policy shapes the food supply chain, what people eat and the societal, health, and environmental consequences. He has carried out ground-breaking work on food additives, obesity, diet and poverty, and long before Jamie Oliver was heckling government about school food.

For Lang food is a multi-disciplinary puzzle, consisting of element from economics, transport, chemistry, biology and culture that has to be put back together. The current argument over the importance of quality food and sustainable production is cause for optimism. Professor Lang says: 'I think the rise of the artisanal food producer is a sign that we really are trying to reconnect with our roots.'

He concluded: 'My own view is that we're still sleepwalking into a shock. I think obesity is the health shock, healthcare costs because of obesity are the economic shock and climate change is the environmental shock. In the next few years the big issue will be food security, how we get what we need to eat. And I don't think we're paying anywhere near enough attention to that.'