Food Standards Agency on hold

Much was hoped for the new Food Standards Agency - an independent body to oversee our wellbeing without being tainted by the powerful farming lobby. It has not been clear, ever since it was first mooted, exactly how it would be financed so as to be truly independent.

Now we learn that it has been put on hold by the Government which needs the legislative time it was going to devote to setting it up to deal with the reformation of the House of lords. Which is more important is a matter of opinion but one would have thought that food standards were a more urgent matter than reforming the House of Lords.

Foodbots to the Fore

For those of us who live outside the areas where supermarkets have an on-line ordering and delivery service, shopping in the old-fashioned way is still a fact of life. This gives one the opportunity to read the labels on a product before deciding whether or not to buy it.

According to a contributor to the 'Independent' on September 7th, there are 40 or more ways in which manufacturers can disguise the existence of Monosodium Glutamate (MSG), a flavour enhancer which appears in hundreds of ordinary food products but which is distrusted by many as being toxic and causing headaches. This and enough other worries about food labelling exist to cause the formation of a campaign to provide consumers with clear interpretation of food labelling. This campaign can be reached through its Web Site - http://www.truthinlabeling.org

There are genetically modified foods on supermarket shelves now. Those who worry about whether there has been enough testing to ensure that they are completely safe have the difficult task of trying to find out from the label whether their favourite tomato puree, for instance, contains any GM components. It takes a degree in genetic engineering to understand the implications. Help is at hand in the form of the Web Site with the longest name I have come across - http://www.naturallaw.org.nz/genetics/gdanger.htm

A very interesting development is imminent. A hand-held scanning device is in course of preparation and, when available, will allow users to insert food content preferences. It will examine your selected food labels and alert you to the presence of suspicious components - provided, of course that the manufacturer has been honest enough to print a properly descriptive label. An on-line version is in the pipe line.

This highlights a problem. TESCO is soon to have an on-line supermarket and nationwide home delivery service and, no doubt, others will have to follow suit. In order for the software in the on-line scanner (your "foodbot") to work, grocers will have to provide full label descriptions of their on-line goods. This calls for a standard labelling system, something which the Ministry of Agriculture has been pressing for over some time - see http://www.maff.gov.uk

In America, where food manufacturers have more power than in the UK, there are several food safety campaigns, which the Independent's correspondent, Eva Pascoe, considers worthy of support, because once a food component is approved over there it is likely eventually to appear in foods over here. One such is found at http://www.safe-food.org It campaigns for crop segregation, clear labelling and legislation to regulate new food technology. Another, which gives advice on avoiding buying genetically modified foods, can be found at the rather intimidating site http://www.online.sfsu.edu/-.rone/gedanger.htm

Eagle-eyed readers will have noticed that writing these web 2 site addresses with their occasionally very imaginative names poses a problem with the full stop. For some reason they always seem to occur at the end of sentences or, even worse, paragraphs. If one carries out the correct punctuation one ends with a full stop, but the web site address most certainly does not. If one punctuates correctly there is a distinct possibility that anyone trying to use the address will include the full stop and it will not work. Convention seems to be growing that, in such a situation, one leaves out the full stop -

Oh sorry,.

From cows into sheep?

Many sheep were fed the same meat and bone meal that is suspected of causing BSE in cattle. Farmers and scientists have been on the outlook for any cases occurring in sheep. Because there is thought to be a small risk of this happening, the Government, following advice from its BSE advisors, the Spongiform Encephalopathies Advisory Committee, (SEAC), has banned sheep brains, spinal cord and spleen from human consumption. Testing continues with sheep carcasses with, thank goodness, no findings.

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