UK: FSA proposals to change food regulation

24 Jul 2017 --- Food Standards Agency Chairman, Heather Hancock, has published the department's plans to change food regulation in England, Wales and Northern Ireland with a document called, “Regulating Our Future – Why food regulation needs to change and how we are going to do it.” This sets out proposals to transform the way food businesses are regulated.

“Along with EU Exit, changing the way food businesses are regulated is one of our two key priorities for the years ahead,” Hancock says.

“The case for changing the food regulation system is strong. We need to reform the way we regulate to keep up the pace of change in the global food economy: in what we eat, where we consume it, how it reaches us. We need a modern, flexible and responsive regulatory system. It is important that we act now, rather than wait for the system to falter, risking damaging consequences for public health and for trust in food. These reform plans are given extra momentum as the UK leaves the EU, a step that will adjust patterns of food production, trade and consumption.”

Hancock says how the plan follows 18 months' debate and discussion with all the stakeholders in this area, including businesses, local authorities, third party assurers and consumers.

FSA has developed the blueprint through open policy making, maintaining principles of openness and transparency to give the public confidence in food safety and standards, she notes.

"At the heart of our plans is an enhanced system of registration for all food businesses, on the basis of which we will apply proportionate, risk-based controls. We want the outcomes from these changes to be a more robust, sustainable regulatory regime, one that sees standards improve in risky businesses, reduces the administrative burden for businesses that demonstrate they are compliant with food law, and sees effective enforcement action against food businesses that fail to fulfill their obligations.”

“The new regulatory approach means big changes for the FSA, including strengthening our oversight of all the bodies involved in inspecting and assuring food businesses. We want to improve relationships with industry, bring a more commercially astute understanding onto our regulatory decisions, and above all ensure that the stringent and robust standards we set help food businesses to fulfill their responsibility to produce food that is safe and what it says it is.”

Future changes
The paper details the changes the FSA wants to make to build a modern, risk-based, proportionate, robust and resilient system.

The key changes include:

- An enhanced system of registration for businesses, which will mean securing better information on all businesses so that we can better identify and manage risk across the food chain. Knowing more about a food business will enable the FSA to make better judgments about regulating it. It wants to create a hostile environment for those businesses that don’t proactively register.

- Segmenting businesses in a better way using a range of risk indicators based on wider information about the business, including the information gathered at the point of registration and from other sources.

- The FSA wants to be confident that businesses are doing the right thing and will introduce more options for how they prove it. Depending on how robust the information that businesses share is, including their past performance, the FSA will set the frequency and type of inspection activity they face. This means businesses with a good history of compliance will face a lower burden from regulation, and free up local authority resources to target the businesses that present the greatest risk to public health.

- The FSA will remain committed to its successful and trusted Food Hygiene Rating Scheme and it will continue to ensure the scheme is sustainable and display becomes mandatory in England as it is in Wales and Northern Ireland.

Responding to emerging risks
“It's essential that the FSA acts now to address the risks in our current regulatory approach,” adds Hancock.

“Being proactive, rather than waiting for a crisis, is the responsible approach. We want to ensure that food regulation in the future is fit for purpose, anticipates and responds to new, emerging risks, and uses new technology and data to evidence that food businesses are fulfilling their obligations for food to be safe and authentic.”

“I recognize that change brings uncertainty, that it causes concern for some. We have the time and skills to work together on the details, continuing to try out options and learn from tests, so that when the fully reformed system is in place after 2020, we can all be confident that it is robust, sustainable, and delivers the benefits that the public and business rightly expect.”

Last week we reported that a new briefing paper found that Britain is unprepared for the most complex ever change to its food system, which will be required before Brexit. Severe problems with the UK food system are likely unless issues are addressed, it warns. And the retail industry is predicting price rises of up to 22 per cent in imported goods, if Britain opts for a “hard Brexit.”

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