Updated 22/07
After last week’s apocryphal announcements of the FSA’s demise, this weeks news comes direct from Andrew Lansley himself.
In this week’s version, the FSA is to remain, but will lose country of origin labelling and food composition policy to DEFRA, and nutrition policy and front of pack nutrition labelling to the DoH. Date labelling meanwhile, as concerned with food safety, will remain with the FSA. Personally, I’m not convinced that splitting labelling across 3 bodies is going to be the best way to provide clear information to consumers. The FSA itself seems destined to focus more narrowly on providing ‘independent expert advice’ on food safety (perhaps bringing it in line with the Swedish model described by Helene?)
http://www.food.gov.uk/multimedia/pdfs/dhpressfsasafety.pdf
To the Department of Health:
- nutritional labelling
- health and nutrition claims,
- dietetic food and food supplements;
- calorie information in catering establishments
- reformulation
- reducing portion size (including in catering); nutrition surveys and nutrition research
- scientific advice and secretariat to Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition (SACN).
- food labelling, where this does not relate to food safety or nutrition;
- food composition standards and labelling, where unrelated to food safety;
- leading on EU negotiations for all non-safety aspects of food labelling, except for nutrition.
And the news…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-10695557
Meanwhile, there’s muttering about where last week’s stories came from…
http://www.thegrocer.co.uk//Articles.aspx?page=articles&ID=210975
Added 22/07
Tim Lang’s thoughts on the FSA break up
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jul/21/fsa-what-a-carve-up
and then a response from Jim Paice, the Minister for Agriculture and Food:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/jul/24/coalition-partners-defend-their-policies
