The Food Standards Agency (FSA) looks set to limit its research funding, relying more on the private sector and other finance streams as its budgets come under increasing scrutiny.
Reporting back to last month's FSA board meeting in London, the FSA's chief scientist Andrew Wadge described plans to pull all of the Agency's science together. He noted that around 20% of its research was already co-funded.
"We are on a declining budget year on year," said Wadge. "But retaining some proportional spend [on research] is important." Board member Chris Pomfret added: "There will be some really nasty hard choices on the way, because we will not be able to fund all the things we want to."
Professor Colin Blakemore, chair of the FSA's General Advisory Committee on Science (GACS) argued for retaining the FSA's research budget and suggested how it should do more.
But he also recognised areas for improvement, such as assessing outcomes of 'horizon scanning'.
Following challenges from several members of the board, Blakemore conceded GACS also needed to take account of the FSA's need to demonstrate value for money in the research it commissioned. And Wadge reported his intention to produce a science and evidence strategy review later in the year. "Unless we can justify [the research], it won't happen," he said. However, because of its importance, the National Diet and Nutrition Survey, which costs around £5M a year, "will continue to be a large part of that spend", he added.
While calling for improvements in the FSA's scientific advisory committees' methods and for the FSA to tap into external expertise, Blakemore said: "So far we have not really tackled the expertise in industry that the Agency might be able to make use of." However, he added: "The relationship with industry is an interesting area to tackle in the future."