Posted by: Professor Susan
Jebb, FSA Chair
Since my last message to you, the FSA has been fulfilling the
post-Brexit watchdog role that we set out in our new strategy.
The Government has just published its report on the UK-New
Zealand Free Trade Agreement (FTA), which includes
advice from the FSA and Food Standards Scotland (FSS) on what the
agreement means for the statutory protections in place for food
safety and nutrition in the UK. We also provided a similar
assessment for the report on the UK-Australia
FTA published in June. Both reports were prepared by the
Department of International Trade (DIT) and presented to the UK
Parliament.
Our assessment for both of these trade deals, which you can read
in the annexes of the respective reports, is that they maintain
the statutory protections we have in place in the UK.
We’re grateful to the consumer groups and other interested
parties who provided their views as we developed our advice. If
you would like to share your views before we advise on future
relevant FTAs, please get in touch at FTAscrutiny@food.gov.uk.
We also recently published our inaugural annual report on the UK’s
food standards. Written jointly with Food Standards Scotland,
the report provides an independent assessment of the state of the
nation’s plate. The report concludes, with a degree of caution,
that despite the significant pressures of COVID-19 and EU Exit
food standards in the UK have largely been maintained, but with
challenges ahead. Future reports will also consider broader
standards linked to production such as animal welfare and
sustainability, and questions related to national food security.
If you have any thoughts or questions about the findings in our
report, or our advice on FTAs, please do let us know in the
comments section below.
