At the London launch on Monday, April 3, 2000, the Food Standards Agency had one job to prove: that it could be trusted. Its chair, Professor Sir John Krebs, was expected to pledge a body run openly and free of outside influence. He also said the agency would have to earn its standing with consumers and with stakeholders such as farmers.
An FSA spokesman gave Farmers Weekly the agency’s three core values. “It will put the consumer first, be open and accessible and be an independent voice,” he said.
Born of a crisis
The agency exists because of a collapse in confidence. The FSA itself says it was set up in 2000 following a run of serious foodborne illness outbreaks, BSE (mad cow disease) among them. A Utrecht University study calls it a deliberate departure from the secretive habits that had marked food safety regulation until then.
Proposals for it were launched in 1997. Professor Philip James, who ran the Rowett institute in Aberdeen, wrote the report for the Blair government on how the body should be structured and what it should do. In February 1998 the Scottish Daily Record tied him to the new agency and quoted his caution about genetically modified food: “I don’t think we fully understand the dimensions of what we’re getting into.”
The legal footing came with the Food Standards Act 1999, which still sets out most of the agency’s objectives, powers and duties. A draft bill appeared in January 1999. George Monbiot, writing in the Guardian, argued that the bill suggested big business had lost one battle, since the agency’s remit would cover nutrition and standards alongside safety. He was sceptical about the rest. Business, he wrote, had already shifted the cost onto small retailers, and he compared the fee, £90 a year for both a corner bakery and a Tesco gigastore, to the poll tax.
What it does now
The FSA is a government department that answers to no minister and acts independently. Its territory is England, Wales and Northern Ireland, where it answers for both food safety and hygiene. In Wales and Northern Ireland it also handles labelling policy, and in Northern Ireland, nutrition policy. Food Standards Scotland is the equivalent public body north of the border.
The law gives it two main aims: guarding public health against dangers that come from eating food, and looking after consumers’ interests where food is concerned. The agency advises ministers, commissions research and keeps watch on developments in science and technology. It can issue guidance on controlling foodborne disease and publish its own advice. As a regulator it applies safety rules itself to some businesses, and supervises how local authorities apply them elsewhere.
An independent board runs it, rather than ministers. The health secretary, together with ministers in Cardiff and Belfast, appoints the chair and board members. Decisions are agreed at open board meetings. The budget, contributed by the UK, Welsh and Northern Ireland governments, has recently been about £150 million.
Sources
- About us (Food Standards Agency)
- Food Standards Agency starts work (Farmers Weekly)
- Sympathy for the devil, George Monbiot (The Guardian)
- Authority Through Deliberative Governance: The British Food Standards Agency in Action (Utrecht University)
- Professor Philip James on GM food safety (Scottish Daily Record, 3 Feb 1998)
