Food safety advisors fear openness impedes their effectiveness
Expert advisors to the UK’s Food Standards Agency (FSA) have expressed concern that the effectiveness of its specialist advisory committees could be jeopardised by opening up their deliberations to greater public scrutiny.
Scientists from academia and the food industry said they are already constrained in what they say in meetings that are open to the public. And some added that the effectiveness of committees would be further compromised should their closed working groups be made public. The member of one committee told Food Manufacture that important discussions and decisions that were likely to prove contentious were often deferred to meetings conducted in private.
The FSA is currently conducting a review of its openness to ascertain whether greater accountability helps or hinders in meeting its objectives. A report on the subject will be presented to the FSA Board in December.
Tom Humphrey, professor of veterinary bacterial zoonoses at the University of Bristol and a member of the FSA’s Advisory Committee on the Microbiological Safety of Food (ACMSF), said at the ACMSF’s open meeting last week that it was in danger of failing in its objectives because its members did not always feel free to comment honestly and freely. “My fear is we are not always dealing with big issues because we are being open.”
In support of lay ACMSF member, Eva Lewis, who thought “too much information [released to the public] can be dangerous”, Humphrey added: “We have a conflict between openness and effectiveness - I think there is a danger we can be too open.”
Other members were in favour of retaining the existing balance of openness. Jenny Morris, food safety policy officer at the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health, felt that opening up the ACMSF’s working groups to public scrutiny would “constrain” discussion.
Sainsbury’s head of food safety Alec Kyriakides concurred with this view. “There are significant drawbacks to being completely open, where we restrict ourselves to less information,” he said. Professor of health protection at the University of East Anglia Paul Hunter believed the current balance of openness provided the “best happy medium”. “To do otherwise would reduce our ability,” he added.
In contrast new ACMSF member Dr Richard Holliman, a consultant in microbiology at St George’s Hospital London, and Susan Davies, chief policy adviser for consumer group Which? were in favour of greater openness. John Bassett, microbiological risk assessor at the Unilever Safety and Environmental Assurance Centre, also reminded members of the criticisms heaped on specialist committees for being too secretive during the BSE outbreak. “We are under criticism for ad hoc groups - is that sustainable or not?” he asked.
