News

Food standards watchdog ‘must be given more teeth’

The proposed Food Standards Agency (FSA), announced by the government in January, has been welcomed by consumer groups as a ‘golden opportunity’ to put public health before the interests of the food industry.

But environmental campaigners warn that unless the agency exercises a strong influence on the farm it will be unable to tackle the real threat to food safety—the power of the agri-chemical industry.

Announcing the FSA draft bill, issued for consultation until March 24, Agricultural Minister Nick Brown said that the agency would have one overriding aim—‘to protect public health and raise safety standards across the country’.

Health Secretary Frank Dobson added that the agency will ‘separate the different — and potentially conflicting — interests of food producers and food consumers. It will also bring food safety and standards under one roof.’

Its responsibilities will include food labelling, developing policies on food safety, and carrying out observations on the safety or quality of food ‘at any point in the food chain’.

However, the bill makes clear that ‘normally, the agency will exercise its public health remit on farms through the agriculture departments’.

The agency will have about 500 HQ staff plus 1500 working in meat hygiene, and an estimated annual budget of £120m, £40m of which will be raised by the £90 levy on all food retail and catering premises, whether a small corner shop or a giant supermarket.

The Consumers Association (CA) welcomed the FSA draft bill as a ‘victory for consumers’ and a ‘golden opportunity to achieve real improvements in the safety and quality of food’.

CA director Sheila McKechnie said that the funding issue should not be used to overshadow the benefits the agency will bring. ‘The food industry spends £500m a year on advertising. Surely it can afford £30m to ensure safety without passing this on to the consumer.’

Jeanette Longfield, from the National Food Alliance described the announcement as ‘brilliant news’, as long as the agency was open and accountable, and not faced with any no-go areas. ‘It also contains provisions to look at nutrition, which means it will cover food standards and not just safety.’

But Greenpeace said the draft legislation will mean that the DTI, DETR, MAFF, a special cabinet committee on genetic modification, and the FSA ‘will all have a say and be pulling in different directions on gene-foods’.

Greenpeace campaign director John Sauven said: ‘Tony Blair is ducking a choice. Either he supports safe and sustainable food production, or he is happy for our food to disappear down the disastrous path that gene-foods represents.’

The Soil Association (SA) warned that almost all of the efforts of the FSA will go into ‘treating [the] symptoms, not the root causes, of food contamination, which begins with the way food is produced on the farm’.

SA director Patrick Holden described as ‘cynical’ the government’s refusal to accept that responsibility for food safety in relation to pesticides and veterinary medicines should be taken from MAFF and passed to the new agency.