The Food Standards Agency has warmly welcomed a government report calling for the agency to oversee a raft for new regulation and mandatory targets for the food industry in the war on obesity.
The agency said the plans for a swathe of taxation, regulation, mandatory targets and fines, proposed by the House of Lords Food, Diet & Obesity Committee, were welcome. It added it was important to have them overseen by an independent monitoring body.
However, critics claimed the plans were hugely unrealistic given the lack of resources for the FSA, which has already been forced into making radical changes to its food hygiene regulations, including handling control to supermarkets, because of lack of boots on the ground to enforce it.
Under the committee’s plans, the FSA would step into the void created by the shutdown of Public Health England and the swingeing cutbacks to the Office for Health Improvement & Disparities (OHID), which launched in 2021 but, sources say, has been “virtually silent” of late.
A leading proponent of the change was FSA chair Professor Susan Jebb, who in a previous role led the food network of the also now-defunct Responsibility Deal.
Although stressing she was speaking in a personal capacity as Professor of Diet and Population Health at the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, University of Oxford, Jebb told the inquiry an independent regulator was needed to oversee a “new concordat” with industry and to report on progress.
“We are asking that the FSA is given a new responsibility and it’s interesting that Susan Jebb actually made the suggestion herself that they have the responsibility and the resources to hold the industry to account, and then report that to the government,” said committee chair Baroness Joan Walmsley.
The Lords want the FSA to report directly to a cabinet committee overseen personally by the prime minister, health secretary Wes Streeting and the Chancellor, “because we are talking about taxes”.
The agency would oversee a new legislative framework with independent oversight of the food system and responsibility for reporting to parliament on progress against targets to reduce sales of less healthy food and associated health outcomes.
The committee repeated calls in Henry Dimbleby’s National Food Strategy report, which suggested the agency should be given a broader role to cover health and sustainability, as well as food safety.
Jebb said: “The FSA welcomes the committee’s comprehensive report. As an independent body, set up to safeguard public health and protect consumers in relation to food, we wholeheartedly share the sentiment of this report on the need to transform our food system to enable people to live longer, healthier lives. This in turn will reduce the pressures on the NHS and boost economic growth.
“The proposals that the FSA should take on additional responsibilities for the oversight and regulation of the food system are for the government to consider.
“From our experience as a regulator, we agree it is important that any targets or requirements on businesses are accompanied by effective monitoring and enforcement to drive positive changes.”
However, an industry source said: “The FSA isn‘t resourced to carry out its current remit, so the idea of adding supervision of the whole food system would be an enormous stretch.
“Any new requirements should only be introduced if they are enforceable by a suitable resourced regulator.”
Shore Capital analyst Clive Black was even more critical of the plans.
“The FSA could not run a bath, never mind be the HFSS police,” he told The Grocer. “It does not effectively do hygiene as it is.”
However, Food Foundation executive director Anna Taylor said the proposed FSA revamp made “perfect sense”.
“The FSA is a non-ministerial department, packed full of technical experts,” she said.
“They are the ones that can independently assess whether the impact of the food system is changing for the better, whether our diets are shifting and whether the policies which the government commits to are being implemented as intended.
“This is just the accountability mechanism which is needed.”
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