What the Food Standards Agency does to ensure healthy food

Wednesday 19 November 2008

Linking environment and farming (LEAF) conference

Introduction

Good morning and thank you for inviting me to your President’s Event.

By way of background, I have had 30 years in the food industry:

• dairy
• prepared foods
• produce – as a non-executive

I have been reasonably close to the farm end of our supply chain.

I have been through recession before and slightly concerned at noises off over what the impact might be.

Having served on the front line I would be concerned that organisations wrestling with debt restructuring and pension deficits. See the impact on share prices and job losses for listed companies. I am concerned that might not pay such close attention to commitments made on food reformulation or food safety or information for consumers. Why? Because I know about the pressures and because representatives of the industry tell me I should be worried.

My job at the Food Standards Agency - like yours – is to ensure the nation has access to good, safe and healthy food in an increasingly competitive global market. That is not going to change.

But I am always thinking ahead to what’s around the corner for consumers. What they are worried about. The Daily Mail has a lot to answer for! But it’s up to us to say what is really going on and where we can be positive about our food and the food supply chain. We are wholly dependent on science and evidence which can be problematic in that if the science is not clear then we will say just that.

These are challenging times for the food supply chain. And it’s not just the economy. We’ve seen the impact of emerging affluence on world food supplies, prices and food incidents such as melamine in milk, irradiated yeast and GM rice.

There are lots of issues that I know are important to all of us here but I must concentrate on our key strategic objectives:

Safer food and healthy eating for all.

Our big short term changes are centred on continuing to make a difference in these key areas, with perhaps a slight change in emphasis:

• Europe – genuinely influencing not simply representing
• Food eaten out of home – ensuring we have a proper sense of how important messages are delivered wherever we choose to eat. Never forgetting that food is a pleasure, it’s not simply fuel.

Regulation of meat is under the microscope as we, somewhat painfully, engage in modernising the Meat Hygiene Service: always our first priority being that we ensure we have safe meat for consumers.

Recognition has been coming for some time that the industry too needs to modernise.

The farming industry has come a long way in ensuring that people have access to excellent food. Our engagement could be better – personally – the NFU has been quick off the mark but our involvement with farming has been much more tactical than strategic and that needs to change.

But I’d like to thank farmers and producers represented here today for all the work they have done.

But all of us have further to go. More to achieve. And it’s important that we get this right. For the farming industry. For the FSA. For consumers.

Let me just say a little more about our top priorities: safer food and nutrition and then look at some new innovations and opportunities for the future and finally how we can work in partnership with you.

Safer food
Food businesses, not the FSA, have a duty to produce food safely. From farm to fork. The protection of consumers is the Agency’s main focus.

The Agency was set up in 2000 to put this right. 'To protect public health from risks ….which may arise in connection with the consumption of food and otherwise to protect the interests of consumers in relation to food.'

Trust is one of the factors that bring customers through the doors of the country’s shops and supermarkets every day. And it has given the food industry stability to innovate and prosper over the past few years.

And it’s trust in the Agency that has provided us with a mandate to maintain our momentum and use our leadership for new and emerging priorities.

In our latest survey, 65% confident in FSA to protect health with regard to food safety. That trust is not a given. It has to be earned every day. It can be lost far more easily than won. We know that for the vast majority of retailers and their suppliers their business success relies on reputation and trust – great safety net for us.

Consumers always come first.

We still have ¾ million cases of food poisoning, 17,000 hospitalisations and around 500 people die from it.

We remain concerned about listeria in ready to eat foods, where incidence and death in older people is a major concern (130 deaths). Campylobacter has a very high number of new cases every year around 300,000 and up to 70% of raw meat shows contamination but only 72 deaths and finally our old enemy salmonella still accounts for approxmately 100 deaths each year.

Vigilance is needed on foods imported from outside the EU. We need to do more. Whole food chain approach to strategic review will make a difference – where is the risk? Where can we have the most impact?

Dairy inspections – a good idea – what are we trying to achieve?

Meat Hygiene Service – a good thing surely – but what are we doing it for? Are we really as clear as we should be when spending the taxpayers’ money?

Nutrition
I now want to talk about nutrition and the way that we can, and do, work together in partnership to help ensure healthier food for the nation’s table. Food safety about regulation, nutrition largely about partnerships.

The Prime Minister’s report: 'Food Matters', earlier this summer, made compelling reading on this. Although none of it is a surprise except, perhaps, the scale of bad health which is related to food consumption.

The FSA’s Eatwell Plate, shows what a balanced diet should look like. But the reality for many people is very different.

The Foresight report shows that obesity is an issue for us all. Levels in England have more than doubled since 1980. And if the current trends continue, by 2050, 60% of men will be obese, 50% of women and a quarter of young people and children.

This can result in serious health problems such as cardiovascular and coronary heart disease, cancer and diabetes.

Our work on salt reduction has had a measurable effect by reducing intake by almost a gram per person per day we have avoided around 3,500 deaths from stroke and CVD. Similarly our campaign to reduce the proportion of energy intake derived from saturated fat from over 13% to 11% will make a big difference.
All of us here have a role to play to play in addressing these issues.

We can work together – FSA, farmers, retailers and manufacturers – to make a difference.

The FSA can do this by encouraging people to eat a healthy diet. By giving them the information they need to make informed choices about what they toss into their shopping trolleys. Whether it’s the hassled mum in the supermarket, or the office workers grabbing a sandwich at lunchtime. And farmers. By producing the variety of the freshest, best quality, most nutritious foods that you can.

Because we know, even when taking the Food Matters report on board that the public are interested in the production and provenance of what they eat – as testified by LEAF’S recent Open Farm Sunday events – with 150,000 people visiting farms across the country to see how good food is produced.

People do care. They will use their buying power to shape new markets. But we have a role together to give them the best food and the best information to makes choices about it.

What are the new innovations and opportunities in the future?

Economy
The current economic climate is hitting all of us.

Food prices around the world have recently been the highest they’ve been since 1945.

We know that we’re relatively fortunate in the UK in that only 11% of our net income is spent on food but for the hardest pressed members of society that figure was 13% and it’s now risen to 16%. This puts a new tension into the market and the work that both the FSA and the food industry do.

We need to look at what effect this has on the nation’s eating habits. How do we continue to encourage people continue to eat healthily when food prices rise?

Eating out of home
There has been a revolution in this sector in the past ten years. Catering and out-of-home eating have a significant place in the public’s diet and there is work to be done here.

Where eating out was once a treat for many families. Something for birthdays and anniversaries. It has now become routine.

People greatly underestimate how much they eat out.

One in six meals now eaten out of the home.

Overall consumer expenditure on eating out hit £27.6 billion in 2005, a real-term growth of 29% in ten years.

The FSA is already working on this with the food industry to help consumers by giving them nutritional information so they can make informed choices.

GM
Which leads me into GM. Will the recent food prices lead consumers to look again at GM, along with other technologies? Will a recession putting significant pressures on food supply chains around the world, change the British public’s wariness of GM?

It is estimated that the premium or additional cost of non-GM vs GM food ingredients is 25% for soya and over 16% for vegetable oils and margarines.

So, it would be fair to speculate that, as the proportion of GM crops increases year on year, non-GM will become an increasingly expensive option for manufacturers and retailers and ultimately us as shoppers.

At present UK consumers have no compelling reason to think positively about GM – what’s in it for me? Cheaper food – not yet? Longer lasting fruit and veg – not yet? Shortages of the food I buy every week? So, give me a reason to support the idea!

But the bad news is that the economics of supply are pushing us to look again at the issue. To re-think what GM means for us all. Before there is a direct benefit for consumers.

A range of traditional and innovative ideas need to be thought about. GM will not provide all the solutions now but it could help in the future.

Any decision on these areas will be based on science and evidence. We will listen to independent scientific studies and make sure the consumer interest is put first.

So if new GM foods are introduced we will make sure that they are safe to eat and that people know what you are buying. Consumers will ultimately decide if GM food has a place in the UK market.

How we work in partnership with you

We share many aims. We share responsibility for finding the solutions.

The advice the FSA gives and the food you produce.

We will continue to work with you to develop a 'whole food chain approach' for identifying the most important and high-risk food hazards. This includes risks from all sources of food hazards not just those that cause food poisoning.

What are other opportunities for working with farmers? Please help by engaging in our fresh look at the future now under way.

Conclusions

Want to end on some going home points:

• We work best when we work together.
• FSA’s role is more important than ever to ensure safe, healthy foods. To keep standards high.
• We all need to pull together to play our part and work together if we are to make our food safer, healthier in the years to come.

Thank you.