Posted by: Professor Susan
Jebb, FSA Chair
The FSA Board met on Wednesday
18 September 2024 to discuss a range of issues including
FSA science, animal welfare, allergen labelling, and proposals
for a phased approach towards a new form of food hygiene
regulation for large, national businesses.
Our discussion of National Level Regulation (NLR) was informed by
a wide range of comments and questions received in advance. We're
grateful to all the individuals and organisations who took the
time to submit questions, which helped to shape our thinking and
the Board discussion.
The proposals for NLR could see a small number of large national
food businesses - like supermarkets - being regulated at a
national level, rather than on a premises-by-premises basis. We
agreed that it is a promising idea that may enable us to
strengthen food regulation and prioritise improvements in food
safety for consumers. You can read more about
national level regulation here.
This is the start of a conversation. We've asked officials to
engage with governments, local authorities, businesses and other
stakeholders and to report back to us in December with a
comprehensive plan for what the next steps might be.
In other parts of our agenda, the Board discussed local authority
resource pressures. Although there's been progress in clearing
the backlog of inspections since the pandemic, data presented to
the board showed that 41,000 new food businesses have not
received an inspection. To ensure food businesses are inspected
routinely, the Board agreed to explore further with local
authorities the possibility of charging food businesses for
registration.
We also discussed a new voluntary international standard on
applying precautionary allergen labels that's being developed
within Codex and proposals for a globally agreed threshold for
allergen contamination to inform the labelling decisions.
Finally, we had the news that two of our Board Members, Justin
Varney and Hayley Campbell-Gibbons are stepping down to take up
exciting new opportunities. We are grateful to them for the
contributions they've made to the FSA over the last two years and
will be looking for new Board Members shortly to take up these
positions.
Our Board meetings are an important part of the FSA's commitment
to openness and transparency. You can catch up on the discussions
from last week's meeting in the
recording on the FSA website.
We value the opportunity these meetings present to discuss our
work so please continue to send questions to us that directly
relate to the Board papers. We are happy to receive more general
correspondence on our work at any time. Our next Board meeting
will be on 11 December in London, and you can register to
attend ahead of the meeting.
