At its board meeting on February 15, the Foods Standards Agency (FSA) discussed the subject of openness and whether it could be more open than it already was. A 20-page paper on the subject was prepared for consideration by the board.
One of the suggestions in the paper was that the FSA should commission a feasibility study of "different models of universal access open meetings, taking account of costs and sustainability"
If the UK can't afford a proper National Health Service or protection against crime, for example, why is the FSA thinking of spending money on something that already works well? It is even talking about setting up a new task force. Surely, this is bureaucracy gone mad?
Just as there is no such thing as no risk there is also no such thing as 100% openness. It is also conceivable that a group meeting in public is actually less open because there are so many things that participants may not say in front of the cameras and the press. I'm not against the existing level of open meetings, in fact they are extremely helpful, but enough is enough. Less is more!
One board member suggested that there should be even more meetings to discuss single issues in more detail so that they could be broadcast. For Heaven's sake we're not talking about TV!
It is unlikely that increasing the number of web cast meetings would reach a wider public - unless they could be made more like Big Brother.
As if this weren't enough to worry about, the paper also reveals that "some of the reputational advantage gained by the FSA's approach to openness is being eroded as other organisations become equally innovative". Does that mean that competition between different bodies as to who can be the most open is justification for this exercise?
I believe the FSA is already as open, impartial and answerable to the public as it can reasonably be expected to be. Let it concentrate more effort on what really matters to the person in the street. That does not include producing a PhD thesis that the most important stakeholders, the consumers, could not be expected to understand.
Clare Cheney is director generalProvision Trade Federation