Food Standards Agency must guard against over-ambition, warns NOAH

Consistency and predictability are needed from the new Food Standards Agency. But the Agency must not be over-ambitious: unnecessary new regulations could threaten the production of healthy food from farm animals, warns the National Office of Animal Health.

NOAH supports the principle of creating a Food Standards Agency as a means of restoring public confidence in food. At the same time it warns that the Agency's remit on food production needs clear definition, both to concentrate its activities and to avoid overlap with other Government bodies.

"The animal health industry is already highly regulated, particularly for food animal products, both in UK and EU law," says NOAH in its response to the Government consultation paper on the setting up of a Food Standards Agency.

"But the growth of regulation, and the consequent costs, is forcing companies large and small to question the extent to which they can afford to continue serving the food animal sector," warns NOAH whose members last year provided around 95 per cent, by value, of all the animal medicines sold in the UK.

"Given that healthy food comes from healthy animals, the prospect of a reduction in the number of medicines available to treat our farm animals should be a cause for general concern, both for food safety and farm animal welfare."

"We remain concerned at the lack of built-in controls to prevent the Agency becoming too ambitious in either its breadth of interest or the creation of new layers of regulation," says NOAH.

"Given the current level of public debate about food safety, it would be all too easy for the Agency to justify ANY expansion of its activities as being in the 'public interest'."

The association emphasises that the Agency's responsibility for food production needs clear definition both to concentrate its activities and to avoid overlap with other Government bodies and adds, "The Agency's remit to communicate with the public to restore public confidence and explain existing systems of food safety procedures should be strengthened."

Part of the problem with the crisis of public confidence in food safety, suggests NOAH, is that not enough is being done to explain to the public what is already being done to protect them.

"Due to credit should be given to all that is already being done by existing Government bodies, while due caution is needed to avoid the potential damage of further legislation," concludes NOAH.

26 March 1999

Notes for Editors

1. For further information contact Roger Cook or Alison Glennon at NOAH, tel. +44 (0)181 367 3131, or visit the NOAH website www.noah.co.uk.

2. The full set of NOAH comments on the Food Standard Agency Consultation is available on the Internet on the NOAH website, or contact the above for a fax copy.

3. The National Office of Animal Health was formed on 1 January 1986 to represent the UK companies which research, develop, manufacture and market licensed animal health products. The association has 34 corporate members and 10 associate members. In 1998 NOAH's members accounted for around 95% of the £384 million UK animal health market, with additional valuable exports.