Kath is Chief Executive of Sustain: The alliance for better food and farming, since 2016 leading the alliance's response to Brexit and its profound implications for healthy and sustainable food, farming and fishing and developing the Campaign for a Better Food Britain. During the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic in 2020, Kath has been the alliance lead on Food and Vulnerability, serving on numerous liaison and coordination groups to support the emergency food response at local and national level. She was instrumental with the Good Law Project and Doughty Street Chambers in launching a judicial review of the government's approach to children's holiday hunger during Covid-19.
Among many initiatives, Kath has helped to design and instigate: the Sustainable Fish Cities alliance campaign, which has now won pledges to serve 100% verifiably sustainable fish from caterers that together serve 1 billion meals a year; the Good Food for Our Money campaign and the Campaign for Better Hospital Food, which have won healthy and sustainable food standards for Whitehall, prisons and parts of the armed forces, and in NHS Standard Contracts for hospitals. Also the Good Food for London and Beyond the Food Bank reports, mapping uptake of good food schemes by London boroughs, for the benefit of citizens, food producers, farm animals and the environment, and encouraging healthy competition between local authorities.
2017 saw the launch of the Right to Food initiative, aiming to provide the legal foundations that would ensure that everyone, no matter what their circumstances, is able to eat well and not experience hunger.
From 2013 to 2017, Kath has been a senior project manager for the Sustainable Food Cities network, working with Food Matters and the Soil Association. She now sits on the steering group for the Alliance to Save Our Antibiotics.
In 2018 she became a Commissioner for the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission, after having served on the steering group that led to its establishment.
From 2009 to 2012, she was a member of the Food Advisory Group to the Organising Committee of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, which wrote and published the first ever Olympic Food Vision standards, championing local and seasonal food, higher animal welfare, sustainable fish, Fairtrade products, reduced waste, and tap water on demand. For several years she has also served as a member of, or advisor to, the London Food Board, under three consectuive mayoral administrations.
Kath's background is as a food campaigner and consultant to organisations such as the Food Commission, National Consumer Council, National Federation of Women’s Institutes, Food Climate Research Network, Greater London Authority and the London Development Agency. She has a special interest in food, sustainability and climate change; is passionate about sustainable fish and fair trade; increasingly fascinated by the role cities can play in improving the food system; and also interested in how the benefits of healthier food and fairer trading conditions can be enjoyed more equitably by consumers and producers alike.
On a voluntary basis, Kath is a trustee of a community-run box scheme and farmers' market that runs an exciting new start-up mentoring programme (Growing Communities); and a not-for-profit food consultancy that helps individuals and organisations working towards more sustainable, equitable food systems (Food Matters). Formerly, she was a voluntary board member of Feedback, the global food waste campaign (Feedback); and a campaign to persuade government, Ofgem and the National Grid to consider the potential for small-scale electrical appliances such as fridges to balance energy demand (Dynamic Demand).
She is a proud not-for-profit shareholder in numerous community food initiatives, including Scotland the Bread, Fordhall Farm, the The Community Farm, Luminary Bakery and the Ourfield initiative.
Kath has a first-class Masters in Food Policy from the Centre for Food Policy at City University London.
Her awards include being identified as one of 10 most influential campaigners in 2018 by The Right Ethos; one of the Top 20 most influential people in public sector catering in 2018 and 2020 in Public Sector Catering magazine; the 2006 Caroline Walker Trust Lifetime Award and, in 2016, an International Giraffe Appreciation Society award for "sticking her neck out in the public interest", helping catalyse third-sector legal challenges to the "anti-advocacy clause". Her work contributed to both the Food Commission and Sustain winning BBC Radio 4 Food & Farming Awards for food campaigning. After Sustain won the 2005 Judge's Special Award, Kath was also honoured to serve for a decade on the judging panel for the BBC Radio 4 Food & Farming Awards, meeting many inspiring food entrepreneurs and campaigners.
Kath Dalmeny owns one share in Barclays Bank, for the purposes of share activism on climate and nature emergency, in support of the work of ShareAction. If this generates any profit, she will donate it to Friends of the Earth.
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