A CHURCH conference on poverty was yesterday warned that Scotland and the rest of the UK were on the way to becoming as reliant on food banks as the USA thanks to Westminster's austerity policies.
The conference organised by the Church of Scotland was held to discuss more sustainable ways to address food poverty in Scotland.
Rachel Gray, the chief executive of The Stop Community Food Centre in Canada, which works to increase access to healthy food, was among the speakers.
She told the Sunday Herald: "Unfortunately there are signs that Scotland and the UK are in the early stages of what Canada and the US went through 30 to 40 years ago - which is collapse of social safety nets and the erroneous notion that somehow a food bank or any kind of charitable emergency food programme could somehow stand in for social policy and the fundamental right to food."
Reverend Sally Foster-Fulton, convener of the Church of Scotland's Church and Society Council, said: "If you talk to most food banks they will say they really are trying to work themselves out of existence as they don't want to be having to respond to this kind of hunger in 21st century Scotland. It is quite appalling."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article