The Food Standards Agency (FSA) believes that, following the £14M boost it received from Chancellor Philip Hammond earlier this month in his spring statement, it is better placed to prepare for Brexit and the expansion of the National Food Crime Unit (NFCU). But it is concerned about future access to the specialist skills it will need to take on additional risk assessment and monitoring activities currently carried out by EU institutions.

There has been doubt for some time about the UK’s relationship with bodies such as the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and the European Commission’s (EC’s) Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed (RASFF) once the UK leaves the EU. While The FSA’s chair Heather Hancock has in the past expressed hope of a continuing good relationship with these institutions, others have been more circumspect – especially under a so-called ‘hard Brexit’.

Last year’s Campden BRI lecture
Giving last year’s Campden BRI lecture, Hancock expressed confidence that the FSA would continue its relationship with EFSA after Brexit. “There needs to be an inspection regime; there needs to be a regulation regime; those things still need to happen,” she said. “You can participate in EFSA and not be a member of the EU … I’m absolutely sure we will have a continuing relationship with EFSA.”

At a conference called ‘Delivering customer confidence in a post Brexit world’, organised by NSF International in London on March 15, I asked the FSA’s deputy director Catherine Bowles whether the FSA would have sufficient financial resources and expertise to take on this additional EFSA and RASFF work after Brexit.

The extra £14M announced by Hammond comes on top of the FSA’s budget of £84M for 2018/19. It is partly required to enable the NFCU to carry out investigative activities on top of the intelligence work it currently does. However, I am not convinced it would cover these activities and all the extra risk assessment and surveillance work currently done by other EU institutions.

Concern about access to skills
“We have already secured additional funding as part of the preparation for Brexit,” said Bowles.  “But while getting access to extra money is absolutely critical, the more concerning issue is going to be about access to the right resource: people with the right skills and the right information.”

She added that this would present a particular challenge, as there would be increased competition for the sort of specialisms that would be required, and they were already in short supply.

“So, that is going to need us all to be thinking slightly differently, perhaps, about how some of these things are done: how risk assessment happens; where information comes from and how it is shared,” said Bowles.

In her presentation to the conference, she conceded that – given 95% of food law came from the EU – the FSA would inevitably be significantly impacted by Brexit.

“The FSA’s priority is to ensure that post-exit there remains a robust and effective regulatory regime for maintaining the safety of food for the benefit of UK consumers and the UK food industry and, more importantly, that consumers continue to have confidence in the food they buy and eat,” said Bowles.

Risk assessment responsibilities
“Beyond day one there definitely will be changes. But there may well be opportunities. The FSA’s role, for example, may well develop if we take on some of the risk assessment activities from the EFSA. And, as you know, risk management decisions are taken within the European institutions. And that responsibility will need to be vested in UK institutions after exit.

“Also, the EC at present maintains a number of systems used by Member States for sharing food safety and food crime information, and tracking the movement of food imported from third countries. It is a key concern for us to plan for what might replace these if our capacity to access and contribute to them changes.”

Bowles conceded that, while the UK government was seeking a good Brexit deal, which maintained continuing good relationships in areas such as food safety that were in everyone’s interest, the FSA was planning for  a number of different scenarios – ‘hoping for the best, but planning for the worst’, you might say.