Fresh questions have been raised over the future role and remit of the Food Standards Agency (FSA) under a Tory government, after the Conservative Party confirmed that it was one of a number of “quangos” under review.
Food Manufacture understands that the FSA would continue to exist under a Tory government, but would have a far narrower remit (mainly covering food safety), with nutrition moving to a new Department of Public Health.
The Conservative Party declined to comment on the extent to which the FSA’s remit would be scaled back but, when pressed about its future, said: “The Food Standards Agency will be part of an ongoing party review into quangos.”
While its work in some areas of food hygiene, quality and safety has been widely praised, the FSA has had a difficult relationship with the food industry in recent years, notably over its approach to nutrition, where it has locked horns with the trade over traffic light labelling, nutrient profiling, salt reduction and the Southampton University study on food colours and hyperactivity. However many industry sources contacted by Food Manufacture expressed dismay at the prospect that it might be dramatically pared down as part of a Tory ‘bonfire of the quangos’
It was extremely unlikely that the FSA would be disbanded altogether, although its role, remit and budget would be heavily scrutinised under a Conservative government, said one source: “The biggest concerns have been about accountability, especially on nutrition, where a regulatory body is effectively coming up with policy. The Tories want to wrestle policy back from independent regulatory bodies.”
Another source agreed: “The thinking is more along the lines of clipping wings than abolition. Jeff Rooker [new FSA chairman] has also made it clear that the FSA’s priority should be food safety, which suggests that some of the more interesting flights of fancy on which it has spent money recently could be a thing of the past, which many people in the food industry would see as a good thing.”
There have also been concerns about the amount of academic research into food controlled by the FSA, said another source: “So much research now depends on FSA cash that there is an issue about the willingness of academics and institutions to pass comment on it anymore.”
Other food industry executives said they would welcome a shift in emphasis for the FSA. One said: “Depending on your view, the FSA does seem to have got overly paternalistic in recent years, which is a reflection on society, and for sure the Southampton study’s arm-twisting on industry did not appear to be based on science. So the FSA needs to get back to science and consumer choice and simplify itself politically rather than to overplay itself as a champion of consumers.”
Set up by an Act of Parliament in 2000, the FSA is an independent, non-ministerial government department charged with protecting consumer interests in relation to food safety and standards. Unusually, it is entitled to make the advice that it gives to ministers public.