Report calls for reduced meat consumption in the UK

A new report has warned that the UK was ''never more than a few days away'' from food shortage and has urged UK citizens to eat less meat, saying retailers and food producers needed to be penalised for wasting food.

MPs on the International Development Committee are urging the government to step up efforts to dramatically cut the amount of food that was thrown away, estimated at around a third of the global production.

According to Sir Malcolm Bruce, chair of the committee, with the UK never more than a few days away from a significant food shortage, UK consumers should be encouraged over time to reduce how often they ate meat.

He added there was no room for complacency about food security over the coming decades if UK consumers were to enjoy stable supplies and reasonable food prices.

The committee said in its Global Food Security report, that the UK needed to investigate whether it should use domestic stockpiles to protect citizens from price shocks in the future.

Urging the government to launch a national consumer campaign Sir Malcolm called on the government to reduce the amount of food they wasted and said it needed to set UK food producers and retailers tough targets to curb waste with ''clear sanctions'' if they missed them.

According to the committee of MPs, it could also help to mitigate the rampant food price inflation that had seen the cost of staple foods in the UK rise by close to a third in the last five years.

The massive rise in meat consumption in rich countries over the recent decades had led to spikes in the price of grain used for animal feed,  widespread deforestation and pressure on agricultural land, and the obesity epidemic. The avoidance of meat even for a day or two each week, would go a long way in easing food pressures, the committee noted.

According to the international development select committee, the increase in meat eating was only one of many factors underlying the global food crises that had affected the developing world twice over the last five years, in 2008 and 2011, and going vegetarian even for just a few meals a week was something that most people could manage easily, and with positive health impacts.

The committee has called on the government to initiate a public health campaign to encourage people to change their food habits.