The Swedish Food Agency organises the first Swedish citizens' assembly!
Sweden's first national citizens' panel met for the first time and began its work to produce recommendations for the Swedish Food Agency.
The 1st of April 2023 was a historic day! Sweden’s first national citizens’ panel met for the first time. Together, the panel will propose changes to enable more people to eat in a way that is healthy, sustainable for the planet and affordable for everyone.
Randomly selected citizens produce recommendations on the future of food
The citizen panel consists of around sixty Swedes from Malmö in the south to Luleå in the north! All panelists have been randomly selected from a stratified sample based on gender, educational background, age, place of residence and type of municipality. The idea is that the panelists, based on these criteria, together represent a “mini-Sweden”, where there is room for different perspectives and approaches to sustainable food consumption.
The panel is tasked with jointly answering the question
What needs to change so that you and everyone else can eat in a way that is healthy, sustainable for the planet and affordable for everyone?
In six groups, the panel will dissect the issue under the sub-topics of food supply, advertising and exposure, and opportunities and accessibility. Each group will then propose recommendations which will be discussed by the panel as a whole and bundled into a report for the agency.
It will be very interesting to learn about how these kinds of processes work and how we can use them in our work!
Irene Blom, project manager, Swedish Food Agency
The final recommendations of the Citizens’ Panel will be submitted to the Swedish Food Agency on 10 June. The recommendations will form the basis for the agency’s joint response to government assignment S2021/03523, together with the Public Health Agency of Sweden in January 2024.
The citizen panel will meet 4 times this Spring
On Saturday 1 April, the panel met for the first time at the Skapa Learning School in Huddinge, outside Stockholm. The day focused on an introduction to the mission and the method. Director General of the Swedish National Food Agency Annica Sohlström welcomed the participants and experts Elin Röös, Åsa Brugård Konde and Billy Langlet contributed with knowledge on the subject.
The panelists then had the opportunity to get to know each other in small groups, where they explored the issue and contributed their own experiences and perspectives on food consumption. The groups also discussed what is important for them to make group work work.
We are very happy to do this panel together with the Swedish National Food Agency, and I am impressed by the agency’s courage to think innovatively about policy development!
David Nordling, project manager Digidem Lab
In spring 2023, the panel will meet three more times. During these, the groups will independently formulate recommendations on what needs to change so that more people can eat in a way that is healthy, sustainable and affordable for everyone. You can follow the process on the Swedish Food Agency’s homepage.
Want to know more?
We at Digidem Lab are of course very proud of this collaboration with the Swedish Food Agency. If you want to know more about how we have worked with recruitment, how we have thought about meeting design or something completely different, you are welcome to contact us. Get in touch with David Nordling who manages this project from our side.
