Examination of Witnesses (Questions 240
- 250)
WEDNESDAY 3 MARCH 1999
MR PAUL
LINCOLN, PROFESSOR
ANDREW TANNAHILL
and DR JOHN
KEMM
Mr Ladyman
240. Could I come back on that. What I think
I am trying to get you to say (if I may put it to you like that
so that we can get this on the record) is that labelling is very
important, that the role of the Food Standards Agency in ensuring
labelling is going to be very important, but that it is possible
that the Agency needs to have powers beyond labelling to start
differentiating safe and unsafe foods and forcing unsafe ones
off the market or forcing them to be marketed in a way which effectively
means people do not buy them?
(Dr Rayner) I think I would agree with you in
the case of schools, that it should have powers to prevent children
from eating unhealthy food and encourage children to eat healthy
foods, but I do not think I would go as far as that in terms of
adults because I think adults at the end of the day are rational
beings and, provided they have the right information, will make
rational choices. I just do not think they get the right information.
(Ms Longfield) I think I agree with you more vigorously
than Mike does because what I think would happen if the Agency
could do that is that there would still be a huge range of food
products on the market at various prices, but what happens now
is that normal "food" is the stuff that is high-fat,
high-sugar, high-salt, heavily promoted, cheap price, completely
ubiquitous, available everywhere, and that if you want to eat
more healthily you have to do extra things. You have to read labels
carefully, you have to shop in certain shops, you have to go to
certain places. What the Agency might be able to do in the long
term, doing all the things you suggest, is reverse that, so that
the normal food, the normal thing that you stick out your arm
and get off the shelf and put in your basket, is the stuff that
is lower in fat, higher in vitamins and minerals, higher in fibre,
and if you want to eat rubbish, fine, you can buy that, too, but
you have to go out of your way to get it, as you have to go out
of your way to get healthy stuff now, so that it reverses what
is normal.
241. If they choose that, would the £40
million a year for ten years be well spent?
(Ms Longfield) Yes.
(Dr Rayner) Also, I think what we have got at
the moment is possibly the beginning of a very important growth
in the market for functional foods and these are new foods which
are targeted specifically at certain consumers who are concerned
about particular aspects of their health. We are about to have
on the market a new margarine, or spread rather, from Flora called
Flora Pro-Active, which has these things called added phytosterols
that help, or are claimed to help, reduce cholesterol levels.
I think the Agency, if it was up and running, should be really
looking at this new product because even I am confused about it.
I have a high cholesterol level and I am still wavering on this.
Is this really a safe product? Is it actually going to reduce
my cholesterol levels? I know there are concerns about its having
an effect on the absorption of vitamins but who at the moment
is really looking at this new area of functional foods, and this
margarine in particular, and saying, "Is this going to be
worth eating?" for people like me. I am an expert, or supposed
to be. I want to know whether I should go out to Sainsbury's when
it is on the shelf and buy it because I have high cholesterol
levels. I do not know. What is the person in the street going
to be doing when Flora Pro-Active hits the market, and the Agency
should be really looking at that, or should be in the future looking
at that sort of issue. These new functional foods under some predictions
could take up to 20 or 30 per cent. of the market. They are growing.
The earlier versions of these functional foods did not achieve
any market share but the new foods are quite good and quite likely
to do so and the Joint Health Claims Initiative, which I referred
to earlier, is an attempt to produce a code of practice about
what people can claim on their food packets and in their advertising
about functional foods, and that is not the job really of the
National Food Alliance and the Food and Drink Federation. It is
the job of the government to do that, to produce those codes of
practice.
Ms Keeble
242. May I ask a bit about the independence
of the Food Standards Agency when it comes to assessing the standards
of food and providing advice, because the nearest I have got to
this is the suggestion that the food industry have disputed some
of your work and yet right the way through all the evidence we
have had so far it has been seen very clearly that the Food Standards
Agency will have to work collaboratively with people, including
the food industry, and that that will affect, for example, things
like labelling and codes of practice and so on. Are you satisfied
that the Food Standards Agency will have enough independence so
that when it comes to assessing, for example, whether the Flora
stuff is good or bad for you or red meat is good or bad for you,
it will be in a position to provide what is seen to be independent
advice?
(Ms Longfield) There was a split in the NFA's
membership about this issue. There was a group of members who
were absolutely clear that if the Agency was going to be seen
to be the consumers' champion and, as we hope, to promote public
health rather than merely protect it, then the only way that that
would be believed would be if there were no members of the food
industry or anybody allied to the food or agricultural industry
allowed on to its governing body and that would be clear and that
would be publicly stated and that would guarantee that people
would believe it when it said something. There was another group
of members who said, "Well, we all have to work in partnerships
now and the area of the agri-food business has expertise that
we would want to draw on," and so long as they were in the
minority on the governing body then it would probably be all right.
So that was our position. We did not really have one. On the one
hand, people said they thought they did not want anybody from
the food industry on the governing body and I understand that
that is the case in the Irish Agency, which is the parallel Agency.
243. That it has not got any?
(Ms Longfield) It does not have any. That is what
I understand. I think there was a feeling that some people were
very sympathetic with that view but thought that we would not
win and so were willing to make the compromise because they thought
that they would have to anyway, but it felt like a compromise
and certainly they were clear about people who represent the public
interest, broadly speaking, having to be in the majority on the
Agency's governing body. I think in terms of whether or not it
would be independent enough and, going back to some previous discussion,
whether or not it would be powerful enough, people are going to
be watching who the chairman of that governing body is going to
be and who the members of that governing body are going to be
really closely because that would send a signal to the world,
if you like, about the character and the nature of it. I think
probably what people will start describing the Food Agency as,
and I hope they do, is the watchdog for food and people will only
believe that the watchdog has teeth and that it is actually willing
to bite people if they can see that there are people on the governing
body with a record of biting people when they need to.
244. How about this bit in the draft Bill
which says that action taken should be proportional, amongst other
things, to cost, which obviously takes into account the effect
of any advice it might give on what is a very important industry?
(Ms Longfield) Our view was that what should happen
is that the government should take account of the cost, government
as a whole, that the Agency should not. The Agency should say
clearly and unequivocally, "This is what is best for health,"
and that government should then weigh up in the way of checks
and balances what the risks and benefits and costs might be and
say, "That is very interesting but we consider the costs
of whatever to outweigh the information that you have given us,
the recommendation that you, the Agency, have given us, and so
our response to your recommendation is X." What worries me
about the Agency itself having to take those costs into account
is that it is going to be put in the position of weighing up public
health against costs to industry or something, and that was where
we got in the mess before, I think. So we would not want the Agency
to be doing that. We agree that obviously costs have to be taken
into account but I think that has to be done in the context of
government as a whole.
(Dr Rayner) On that I do slightly disagree. I
see economics as a branch of science and I think it is possible
to come up with cost-benefit analyses which are independent, which
take into account all the costs, not just the costs to industry
but the costs to the health service, the costs to people in terms
of morbidity, and come up with a cost-benefit analysis for measures
that the government could then proceed to take if they wanted
to do so. I am very keen that the Agency should have economists
within its staff and people who can do proper cost-benefit analyses.
(Ms Longfield) I would just like to say slightly
more about that because the calculations might come out that it
would be much better if we all died at 65 and a half.
Chairman
245. You have not got that off the Chancellor
of the Exchequer, by the way, that last comment? Could I ask you,
when you talked about the issue of membership of the Agency and
you said you had had this debate inside your organisation and
you had felt that really it ought to be people who had the public
interest, what exactly do you mean by "public interest"?
(Ms Longfield) I think what people commonly mean
is people who do not have a financial interest in the outcome
of the discussions. I saw "All the President's Men"
on the television again the other night and it was one of the
bits where "Deep Throat" was in the garage trying to
help the journalists through the story and he said, "Follow
the money," and I think that is what people do. They follow
the money. Is anybody making any money out of this, and if they
are, then I think it interests them. I think with public interest
organisations, consumer organisations, environmental organisations,
the reason why people trust them is because they do not stand
to make any money out of it. I was accused by someone in the food
industry who was saying, "You do not make any money from
it or get any fame or kudos," and such kind of stuff, and
I said, "But actually I want to be a dancing teacher. I would
rather do something else." There is nothing in it for us
to make trouble. We want to make it better. We would rather go
away and do something else.
246. If you were to get 12 shoppers from
a Tesco's supermarket in and people can see that they are completely
independent, they are consumers and they are doing an additional
job other than at the Food Standards Agency, then they are the
public and, therefore, they would look at public interest and
know nothing about the food industry or anything else?
(Ms Longfield) There are two ways of looking at
consumer representation. One is consumer research, going out to
people on the street and focus groups, and all that is extremely
important because it gives you a very useful snapshot of what
people are thinking and the concerns they have and their reaction
to events. An additional way of getting your consumer or public
interest opinion is to have specialist organisations like the
NFA. They are organisations that do just that and they are just
as expert in their approach and the way they approach the subject
as the professionals from government and from private industry.
They are all professionals unions, they are organised labour.
Generally speaking, they are organised in favour of the consumer
interest and that is not the same as the person in the street
or the MORI poll or the focus group. The best example I can think
of is that a good couple of years ago we were having discussions
with a supermarket chain about where we stand on genetically modified
food and they were saying to us, "This is all very interesting"
and we were very concerned about it and labelling, and they said,
"But we do not get very many letters and phone calls about
that" and we said, "No, but you did not get very many
phone calls about BSE before, did you?" and I have to confess
to feeling rather smug now because we were thinking a long time
ago that this would be a big issue and now it is. So it is our
job to see those things coming.
247. Could I move you on a little bit and
talk about the interaction of the Food Standards Agency, if it
is brought into position, with other European organisations and
with other international bodies on labelling. Do you think there
is likely to be any discussion in relation to areas such as nurtition,
food standards and labelling?
(Dr Rayner) Yes. I think that food standards are
in a sense moving out of the control of national governments and
in a sense even out of European Union institutions towards World
Trade Organisation standard-setting by such things as the Codex
Alimentarius Commission, and the new Food Standards Agency should
be aware of that, that the Codex is becoming more important in
setting standards at world level which impact upon the standards
we can have in the United Kingdom and the Agency will need to
take a very proactive role in the Codex Alimentarius and World
Trade Organisation negotiations to ensure that we have these good
standards in the United Kingdom.
(Ms Longfield) I am not entirely sure whether
I would want the Agency to play a role. Certainly it must have
one because, as Mike says, we have long since passed the point
where food is a domestic issue. So it is going to be integrated
in European and international institutions but some of the members
have expressed some slight concern about the Agency officials
being the official government representation in European and international
fora, because if it was the case—and it may very well be—that
the Agency gave advice publicly and openly to government on subject
X and the government, for whatever reason, took account of the
costs and implications for government policy and actually did
not want to accept that advice or wanted to modify it, then the
Agency officials would be going into a meeting to propose a policy
and it would be a government policy they did not believe in because
they had recommended something else and it would put them in a
difficult position. So I think they ought not to be the people
representing the government, that government policy should be
represented by government ministers and the relevant civil servants
and not by the Agency.
248. May I briefly touch on one area in
which I think we all have an interest in terms of public health
and that is the issue of promotion. People always say it is better
done locally in terms of COMA and food is left as something that
should concern us individually anyway. Is that wholly true, looking
at what the government are doing in other areas like Health Improvement
Plans and Health Action Zones as far as my own constituency is
concerned, where they are looking at the fuller health picture
and whether or not the FSA and the standards laid down through
health promotion organisations could be knitted in at that level
so that the issue about your vegetables and groceries is an issue
with teeth and not something coming from a national body, independent
or otherwise?
(Ms Longfield) My understanding is you have to
evaluate particular projects. If you look at local projects on
their own, they have some value and they have achieved some benefits
for the people involved in them. If you look at national campaigns,
media campaigns and so on, they have some value in terms of attitudes
and knowledge and change and so on, but what really works is if
you have a national campaign which allows for local initiatives
within it so that they have the local initiatives and feel like
they are part of the bigger picture and integrated and join up
sensibly from the one to the other. So the one without the other
tends to work least well. So you are right, there is no value
in trying to impose a uniform away of doing things in every part
of the country. Obviously people do have unique and individual
ways they want to do things but within an overall national picture
into which they fit and feel that they fit and that it has a past
and a future. Looking at broader issues, then I think it works
very well. So yes, I think both local, specific and innovative
but within a national picture that people can see.
(Dr Rayner) I very much agree that some things
are best done at local level and some at national level. In terms
of turkey burgers, the problem of enforcement of food labelling
is that local enforcers have been fighting multinational companies
on labelling issues and this is where the Agency can take an important
national role in enforcement of some of these standards, but still
I agree that some enforcement on things like food labelling and
so forth has to be done at a local level. It is a very important
balance to strike between what is best done locally and what is
best done nationally and I would argue for some national enforcement
with food labelling regulation.
Ms Keeble
249. Just on a technical point, are street
market stalls subject to the labelling and should they be because
they are one of the places that has been the mainstay of providing
low-cost fruit and vegetables to people in particular on low incomes?
(Ms Wordley) They are covered by the existing
registration legislation. It is the registration legislation on
which it is proposed the levy will be based. I will not try without
a bit of paper with the figures in front of me to give you the
precise details on how market stalls are covered by the registration
legislation but I could give you a note on that.
Chairman
250. Are you going to be looking at areas
like Health Action Zones and Health Improvement Programmes as
being the areas that the Agency should influence in years to come?
(Ms Wordley) The Health Action Zones and Health
Improvement Programmes are part of overall Department of Health
policy in relation to public health and the Department of Health
will be in the lead on that. However, I think what we hope to
do—and the plan is that the Agency will do—is establish
very close working relationships with the Department of Health.
Essential to that is good co-ordination so that where the Agency
is, for instance, doing some of the promotional-type activity
through some kind of campaign on both safety and nutrition, it
will link in as necessary through the Department of Health with
work that is going on in particular on Health Action Zones. So
it is really about good communication, which is key to the Agency's
role.
Chairman: May I thank
all the witnesses for this session. I hope our report will be
with the printers by the end of the month and hopefully some of
the evidence you have given here this afternoon will be influencing
what we have to say. Thank you for attending.
|
