Municipalities have limited options for ensuring a healthy food environment
26 January 2021
Municipalities have an important responsibility to provide a safe and healthy food environment for their residents. In practice, however, they lack the legal scope to do so. This is evident from research by the Law Center for Health & Life (Public Law section) of the UvA, undertaken on behalf of five cities (Amsterdam, The Hague, Ede, Rotterdam and Utrecht).
Partly as a result of the UvA investigation, the municipalities sent an urgent letter to the State Secretary for Public Health, asking for a change in the law in order to be able to fulfill their duty of care in the future.
This research was undertaken because the layout of our living environment influences how healthy we are. The living environment of the average Dutch person increasingly encourages people to consume excessively unhealthy food.
