Sue Davies, Which?’s chief policy adviser told Food Manufacture’s Food safety conference last week that the horsemeat crisis underlined the need to restore full responsibilities to the agency.
“We’ve been concerned for some time about changes made to the FSA in 2010, which has made it a lot weaker and caused a lot of confusion. That has been picked up by the Environment Food and Rural Affairs committee and the recent National Audit Office report ,” said Davies.
“We think the FSA needs to be given back policy responsibility for food labelling, standards and nutrition to make sure it can take a joined-up approach from a consumer perspective.”
In 2010, the government shifted policy responsibility for food authenticity and composition – when unrelated to food safety – to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Responsibility for nutrition labelling was transferred to the Department of Health.
‘Damaging for food companies and consumers’
Restoring its former responsibilities would enable the FSA to prioritise consumer interests, said Davies. “Our research shows if you don’t put consumer interests first, it can be damaging for both food companies and consumers.” The horsemeat crisis had definitely damaged consumer confidence in the food industry and was continuing to do so, she added.
Replying to Which?’s criticism in a question and answer debate, Andrew Rhodes, FSA chief operating officer, declined to comment directly on the wisdom of the responsibility changes: “I can’t comment on the government changes because that is venturing into politics,” he said.
“But there have been numerous reviews, so far, of the incident. None of the reviews said the machinery of government changes affected the response to the incident. Some have said the FSA is weaker – I’m not sure I would agree with that.”
‘Largest and fastest response anywhere’
Rhodes said the response to the horsemeat crisis was “the largest and fastest response anywhere in Europe and the largest testing response seen anywhere in the world”.
The FSA identified the exact threat to the food chain more quickly than any other country and the UK was the first country to make arrests, he said. “So, I think for a supposedly weaker organisation, we did quite well – and that is what the reviews have found.”
He acknowledged the reviews had also found the responsibility changes had “caused confusion in other people’s understanding of who does what”. But it did not influence the origins of the crisis or the agency’s response to it, he said. “No one said the horsemeat incident would have been avoided but for those changes”.
Watch Davies identify her top three lessons from the horsemeat crisis in our video interview.
The Food Safety Conference took place at the National Motorcycle Museum, near Birmingham, on Thursday, October 17. The main sponsors of the event were Intertek, Ishida and Alchemy.
Associated sponsors were NSF, Safefood 360, Softrace and the Institute of Food Research.