The Government says that the Food Standards Agency will be "a powerful new agency to raise standards for food which will benefit every man, woman and child in the UK".
At a recent meeting of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF) Veterinary Medicines Directorate Liaison Meeting with Consumer Representatives ( a prize for the meeting with the longest title perhaps?), Miss Jill Wordley, Head of the Consumer and Policy Division at MAFF, who will be familiar to those who attended the NFCG Food Discussion Day in March last year, gave a brilliant assessment of progress in setting up the Food Standards Agency (FSA).
The Government’s White Paper was published in January and it made clear the Government’s intention that the FSA will take over much of the responsibility for setting standards for food hygiene, and then monitoring that the standards are being followed. She explained that, while the FSA will not have operational responsibility for farm practice, it will have legal power and duty to intervene if standards are not being followed.
The next step is to prepare the draft Bill. She is confident that the Bill will be found time in the next session of Parliament. In the meanwhile a shadow FSA is being set up and whole sections of MAFF are being transferred to the new (albeit shadowy) Authority. She expects that the FSA will be properly set up by Parliament by the turn of the millennium, but will be virtually fully operational well before then.
Eventually the FSA will have the full responsibility to operate the Food Safety Act and will be able, will have the duty in fact, to act in cases not covered by other authorities or where other authorities are not carrying out their responsibilities. The basic reason for setting up the new Agency is to obtain the divorce of the food safety aspect from MAFF’s responsibilities to avoid conflict with its many other agricultural responsibilities. This will, it seems, be realised to the full.
The Veterinary Medicines Directorate, while being about food safety, has many other responsibilities, not least animal health and welfare (is that flea powder for dogs quite safe and what about the ‘flu treatment for horses?) and will continue. One of its primary roles is that of risk identification. The FSA will work with both the Veterinary Medicines and Pesticides Directorates and will have representation on their Boards so that direct influence can be brought to bear.
Copies of a short leaflet about the Food Standards Agency can be obtained, free, from Admail 600, London SW1A 2XX or by phoning 0645 556000.
At the same committee meeting (forgive me for not repeating the name - life is too short) Professor C.A. Hart talked about the declining effectiveness of antibiotics. Resistant genes were always present he pointed out, long before antibiotics were invented. Nowadays bacteria are constantly exposed to antibiotics and they fight back, developing resistant genes which they pass on.
Antibiotic resistance is caused by misuse:
He did not have a positive view of the situation. Animals develop resistance to antibiotics and can pass this resistance to humans. This, he said, cannot be controlled at UK or even EU level, and is not being controlled at International level. There is a case to stop the reckless use of antibiotics for growth promotion. This is a huge area of ignorance thought Ms J. Longfield, of the National Food Alliance and there is a dearth of research.
There are in place two surveillance systems - the UK Residues Surveillance and the Adverse Reaction Surveillance. Within these there are both statutory and non-statutory schemes and the amount of surveillance that is carried out, unseen by ordinary consumers, is quite staggering and its scope is constantly expanding. Pressure is being put upon suppliers outside the EU to have surveillance systems at least as effective as ours.
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