Feature

Wrong end of the stick

The Food Standards Agency will be flawed by a focus on food retailers rather than producers, argues David Kilcoyne

A draft bill for the proposed Food Standards Agency (FSA) was published in January, following last year’s white paper and a period of consultation. Although the proposals are welcome, if long overdue, they raise serious doubts about the FSA’s ability to deal adequately with the problem of food safety.

The bill proposes staffing the new agency with 500 civil servants, presumably moved from the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. They will be joined by 1,500 existing Meat Hygiene Service officials.

There are also plans to recruit additional inspectors and tighten the guidelines for intervention. The proposal to locate the FSA within the Department of Health is important.

But questions remain: can the FSA be truly independent if it is run by ex-MAFF officials? Will the FSA be able to make decisions that affect production processes, shown to be the main threat to food safety? What will it be able to do about genetically modified food?

The FSA is to be funded by an annual flat rate tax of £90 on food outlets, with the exception of those selling only sweets or canned drinks. This tax will bear far more heavily on corner bakeries or cafes than the local branches of giant supermarket chains,

Taxing the retailer underlines the bill’s apparent belief that food safety problems do not lie in production processes. Although the FSA will assume the powers of the MHS, currently responsible for abattoirs, its main role will be to police retailers and consumers on the safe storage and preparation of food. This is despite the fact that BSE and salmonella originate in production methods, not in the way food is sold, stored or cooked.

Regulating the use of antibiotics and pesticides in farming will remain with MAFF; the FSA will be limited to an advisory role.

Cattle foodstuff was implicated in the BSE scandal and the FSA will monitor cattle feed labelling. But crucially it will not have the power to ban foodstuffs it considers dangerous; that will remain with MAFF.

Campylobacter, a bacteria routinely found in pork which causes food poisoning, is becoming resistant to antibiotics due to their use in intensive pig farming. Again, MAFF will remain the regulator of drug use in meat production, with the FSA having a purely advisory role.

Current government statistics estimate that 1 in every 200 eggs is still contaminated with salmonella. The recent outbreak of food poisoning in Cumbria, caused by E. coli 0157 bacteria in milk, illustrates another failure in the production process.

Consumers and small retailers cannot be blamed for bacteria already present in food when it arrives at the shops. Nor can they be held responsible for the routine use of antibiotics and other drugs in meat production.

Food production methods are increasingly influenced by the commercial imperatives of supermarket chains. The companies express concern for consumer safety but introduce risks into food production because of their demands for uniformity, longer shelf lives and year-round availability of previously seasonal products. This has led to the increased use of pesticides, drugs and genetic modification in food production, methods justified on the grounds of consumer demand.

The FSA’s powers in relation to genetically modified food and genetically modified organisms (GMOs) will be limited. It will be able to monitor research developments, seek advice from experts and develop its own research strategy. But it will have no powers to intervene in existing research and, more importantly, no direct influence over the regulation of GMOs or their release into the environment.

Currently responsibility for GMOs lies jointly with the Department of the Environment and Transport and MAFF. The draft bill contains no proposals to alter this arrangement. The agency will have to be consulted before regulations are made where they relate to food safety, and it may advise the health secretary to intervene, but the DoH will not have ‘any explicit role in the making of regulations’.

A further limitation could result from the FSA’s obligation to take account of international law. If it advises against importing GMOs, this could be challenged through the World Trade Organisation as contrary to free trade regulations.

The so-called ‘banana war’ over the USA’s right to sell bananas in EU countries could be the rehearsal for a more economically significant battle over the USA’s right to export food containing GMOs to Europe.

Some observers think the use of GMOs in US-produced food is so widespread that it might already be impossible to distinguish between GM and non-GM food.

While the FSA might be able to reduce threats to food safety in the retail sector, there are serious doubts about whether it will be powerful enough to reduce identified risks in food production processes. The prospects of the agency ensuring the safety of GM foods and controlling their introduction to the market seem to be negligible.

Finally, the FSA is to be concerned mainly with safety standards and will have little or no role in improving standards of food quality and nutrition.

A food standards agency should be concerned with encouraging production of a diverse range of nutritious, affordable food which is available to all, whether it is sold raw, as ready meals, take-aways or in cafes or restaurants—but, starved of real power, the proposed agency will be a weakened version of this ideal.