February 2007

I am obviously delighted that the Judicial Review on GM rice found that the FSA complied fully with our obligations under EU law.  This is also very good news for consumers, because we have always stated that we will put consumer interests first on food issues, and the review has provided a stern test of our performance against this standard.

Putting the consumer first means that in any incident, such as the contamination of American long grain rice with a GM variety, we start with the science and conduct a risk assessment.  Judgements then need to be taken about the action that needs to be taken to address the problems, making sure that the action is proportionate to the risks and that Food Business Operators comply with EU regulations.

At its open meeting in London last week, the FSA Board agreed to the establishment of a new overarching General Advisory Committee on Science.

The Board sought assurances that the new committee should include social scientists, and that as well as providing an independent challenge to the Agency and Board, the new committee would also provide support to the scientists working in the Agency.

So why this new committee? As Chief Scientist it’s important that I put in place governance arrangements that make sure we’re getting the best advice, which means independent challenge of the highest order.

The Agency's Board was very interested to get an update this morning on the bird flu outbreak in Suffolk and the subsequent investigations into how the outbreak occurred in the first place. 

In a report to the Board's open meeting in London, I summarised the reasons which I have set out earlier into why this is not a food safety issue.

I also talked about testing of meat for the virus, since this has been the topic of some enquiries to the Agency.  We are aware of one laboratory that uses a molecular test using polymerase chain reaction (PCR). In general PCR methods are semi-quantitative and will not be able to distinguish between live and dead virus. Additionally, this test takes about 5-10 working days to complete.

One of the real challenges for regulators in recent years has been how to respond to very low levels of genotoxic carcinogens in food.These are chemicals that have the potential to cause cancer by damaging the genetic material in the cell.This differs from the types of chemicals which exhibit a threshold below which any exposure is thought to have no effect on health.

Because experts are unable to identify a threshold for genotoxic carcinogens below which damage will not occur our regulatory response has been to keep levels as low as practicable by preventing their deliberate presence in food and by minimising unavoidable contamination and natural occurrence.

I attended a meeting of more than 500 senior food business executives from 43 countries last week to discuss issues around food safety. Given the complexity of the global food supply, the call for one common food safety standard throughout the supply chain around the world, known as the Global Food Safety Initiative, was of particular interest.

There is clearly a lot of sense in retailers and food suppliers operating to a common standard, not least because of the inefficiencies in the current arrangements whereby retailers and suppliers operate to a multitude of different audit and safety standards around the world.

I've been listening to radio interviews with my colleague Dr Judith Hilton, the Agency's head of  microbiological safety, reassuring us that we can continue to eat poultry and egg products, despite bird flu.

Although there doesn't seem to have been a panic by the media or consumers about the safety of eating poultry and eggs, people naturally look to the FSA and other bodies for reassurance. Understandably at times like this, our advice can come under scrutiny, and people have asked how we can be confident about the risk posed  by 'new diseases'. Bird flu isn't of course a new disease, but H5N1 strains of it are, since we've only known about them since 1997.

I was interested to read details of research in The Lancet showing the benefits of folic acid, not least because of the consultation we’re currently running, which includes an option to introduce mandatory fortification of flour with folic acid.

The study concludes that folic acid benefits the cognitive health of older adults. The participants were randomly chosen either to receive folic acid supplements (800 micrograms a day), or a placebo, for three years. Memory and the ability to process information – which, as we know, usually deteriorate as we get older – were significantly better in the group that received folic acid, compared with the group that received the placebo.