Government grants British Sugar license to pollute

We are seeing a failure of government on sugar pollution. Last week the government announced that it would – for the fourth year in a row – allow British Sugar to ask sugar beet growers to use a highly damaging pesticide on this year’s sugar beet crop. Neonicotinoid pesticides have been previously banned because of their highly damaging impact on bees and other pollinators. Yet this year, the government decided once again to prioritise British Sugar’s returns over nature. This is despite British Sugar repeatedly promising that they were seeking ‘emergency use only’ and promising to develop alternative pest-reduction strategies to avoid needing to use these pesticides.

This is an active government decision to support UK sugar supply, a decision that is particularly irresponsible in the context of a sugar pollution emergency: the UK has nearly three times as much sugar supply as is needed to meet the safe threshold for the entire population, and excessive sales of sugary foods are driving ill health and increased pressure on the NHS.

Government policy on sugar is increasingly incoherent. Despite public health policies aimed at helping people eat less sugar – such as by promoting reformulation of sugary foods to make them healthier – it has yet to address the way that public policy actively supports an over-supply of sugar in the UK. Unsurprisingly oversupply leads to overconsumption.

Around half the UK sugar supply comes from sugar processed from sugar beet by British Sugar, and the country uses roughly the same area of land to grow sugar beet as all vegetable and salad crops combined.

A recent report by Feedback and Action on Sugar argued for a suite of policy measures aimed at reducing sugar supply, both from beet and from imports of cane sugar. Our current failure to address the damaging effects of Britain’s tidal wave of sugar is perhaps no surprise given our current Health Secretary’s decision to ‘recuse’ herself from decisions related to sugar, as she’s married to the boss of British Sugar.

Time will tell whether the industry uses these pesticides as they did last year – government has granted permission but pests levels need to reach a certain point before the pesticides can be used. As the industry breaths a sigh of relief and the status quo of sky high sugar supplies is maintained for another year, now is the time for all parties to get serious about how they plan to protect both people and nature from sugar pollution.

Read the full report here.