A month after four senators asked the Trump administration to implement the food safety recommendations in a General Accounting Office (GAO) report calling for a national food strategy (see our February 21, 2017 blog for more details), researchers at Vermont and Harvard law schools released the results of a collaborative project that also calls for a national food strategy. “Blueprint for a National Food Strategy” was produced by the Center for Agriculture and Food Systems (CAFS) at Vermont Law School and Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Clinic (FLPC), with support form the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.

The report’s authors began by looking at national food strategies in other countries. These strategies include ones that simply aim to reduce the degree to which federal agencies, laws, and policies work at cross purposes, to ones that also seek to fulfill broader functions, such as: strengthening vital systems; addressing an overlooked policy area; and preventing or mitigating a national crisis.

“Blueprint for a National Food Strategy” is intended to provide a roadmap to develop a national food strategy and identifies four major principles to guide the process, namely: Coordination; Participation; Transparency and Accountability; and Durability. The report concludes by stating, “A national food strategy in the United States could provide a framework for more informed, effective, and coordinated law and policy-making at the federal level and throughout the country. While much of the conversation around a national food strategy will focus on the substance of such a strategy (the policy goals and priorities themselves), process is equally important.” It adds that the process “can ensure that a comprehensive national food strategy creates a structure to advance a more healthful, sustainable, equitable, and economically vital food system.”