Examination of Witnesses (Questions 620-639)
DAME DEIRDRE
HUTTON AND
DR ANDREW
WADGE
10 MAY 2006
Q620 Chairman: Just before you go
on, can you actually give me one example where you have actually
said to government, "We feel your policy is wrong",
is there one occasion where that has happened?
Dame Deirdre Hutton: Probably
not in my six months.
Q621 Chairman: Andrew, do you know
of any occasion where it has happened?
Dr Wadge: Not as—
Chairman: Perhaps you could write to
us and look through the records.
Q622 Adam Afriyie: What steps are
you taking to address the concerns over the high level of trans
fats in foods, because your labelling scheme does not take that
into account?
Dame Deirdre Hutton: The first
thing I would say is that there are EU implications here and I
shall hand over to Andrew.
Dr Wadge: Two things about trans
fats. One is that in terms of labelling we are pressing within
Europe for proper labelling of trans fats to be included in the
review that is going to take place in 2007-08 so we will be pressing
for proper labelling of trans fats. I think in terms of public
health this illustrates how we work. What we have done is we have
been to the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition, we have
asked them about trans fats in relation to our strategy that we
will be consulting on later this year on saturated fats and energy
imbalance and we said, "What is the importance of trans fats
compared to saturated fats?" The advice from the independent
experts has been that in relation to overall dietary intake and
public health impact actually you should focus on saturated fats
rather than trans fats. I think this illustrates the way that
we work, we take the science, we act on that science, but we also
recognise that consumers want to exercise choice and so we will
be pressing within Europe for proper labelling so that consumers
can exercise their choice on trans fats.
Q623 Adam Afriyie: Dame Deirdre,
in your view do you have the power and influence, enough power
and influence, or the right types of power and influence, to encourage
the food industry to reduce trans fats or saturated fats within
food?
Dame Deirdre Hutton: Interestingly
enough I think this is an area where the market is, in a way,
running ahead of the science. Marks and Spencer, for example,
have taken all the trans fats out of their food because they perceive
that as an issue that consumers are worried about, so there is
an interesting dynamic here where the market, for its own reasons,
wishes to satisfy consumer demands and does that, and the regulator
is, in a sense, slightly behind that conversation, so there are
a whole range of different influences that go on here.
Q624 Dr Turner Staying with the fats,
one of the things which seems of obvious concern is the use by
industrial bakeries of hydrogenated fats purely for manufacturing
convenience and to increase the shelf life of their products and
these are, as I understand it, quite a potential health hazard.
How concerned are you and do you think that the public is sufficiently
aware that there is this content in most of the industrially baked
bread they take off supermarket shelves?
Dame Deirdre Hutton: I think the
public probably are not aware and, as Andrew said, we would like
to be able to ensure that form of labelling, but I come back to
what Andrew said in relation to the science that our view is that
the bigger problem is around fat as a whole and saturated fats,
that is the bigger problem in relation to nutrition.
Dr Wadge: The other point is that
the advice that we have received from our experts is that the
intake of trans fats should not exceed 2% of total energy intake
and the information that we have obtained from diet and nutrition
surveys shows that this is the case. Having said that, our work
on energy imbalance and saturated fats in general show that there
is still clearly a lot of work to be done, but the evidence is
pointing towards work focussed on saturated fats in general rather
than trans fats specifically.
Q625 Dr Turner This seems to be a
very key area because there is a clear social divide in this,
just as we are very acutely aware that there is a social health
divide, there is a clear social dietary divide and these products
figure far more in the diet of children in poorer households than
in middle class communities, so do you feel there is an urgent
need to address this problem and this may need government action
to address it?
Dame Deirdre Hutton: I think in
a sense you should address that question to the scientists. The
advice I am getting which, in a sense you have just heard, is
that this is not the critical need, no. It is one of those issues
where, in a sense, the public perception of something has actually
moved ahead of where the science is in terms of being more worried
about something than the scientists are.
Q626 Dr Turner I am thinking of our
obese children who are drinking fizzy drinks full of sugar, they
are being stuffed with bread which contains far more than 2% of
hydrogenated fat, that we are building up an enormous health risk
for the future in these kids?
Dame Deirdre Hutton: I agree with
you about the enormous health risk to these children, but that
is about the total energy balance and I think what Andrew is saying
is that the greater problem here is around fats as a whole, saturated
fats, and their contribution to the energy imbalance and for us
that is a greater problem than the very specific problems which
are perceived as being the—
Q627 Dr Turner Yes, but what are
you doing about it, what are you proposing to do about it?
Dame Deirdre Hutton: About the
total of saturated fats?
Q628 Dr Turner The problem as you
state it.
Dame Deirdre Hutton: That is exactly
why, it goes back to the previous conversation, that is exactly
why we are doing two things, first of all giving the public the
information about levels of fat so that they can see how to change
their own dietary habits, and I should say that the purpose of
sign posting is to help people understand complex foods because
the information we had from consumers is that they simply do not
know what is in complex food, so levels of salt, in fact, and
sugar indeed come as a huge surprise to people when they start
to see the labelling, so the one strategy is to give the public
the information, the other strategy is to work with the industry
to start reducing levels of fat. If you recall we want to reduce
salt, fat and sugar, we started with salt, we had a very successful
campaign around the reduction of salt and industry has worked
with us actually very well on that. We are now moving on to fat
and sugar which is rather more difficult because it is actually
an integral part of the food rather than an added ingredient.
Q629 Dr Turner: But not in bread.
Dr Wadge: Could I make one very
specific point on that, in that you asked what exactly are we
doing. Our strategic plan target for 2010 says we want to shift
from 13.4% of energy intake due to saturated fats to 11%. We will
be consulting on a strategy to achieve that.
Q630 Dr Turner: Is aspartame safe
to use as a sweetener?
Dr Wadge: We have received—
Q631 Chairman: Yes, or no.
Dr Wadge: We have received advice
from the—
Q632 Chairman: Yes or no.
Dame Deirdre Hutton: Scientists
do not do yes or no, science evolves.
Dr Wadge: I have to explain this
in terms of scientific evaluation. Aspartame has been evaluated
on a number of occasions, most recently by the European Food Safety
Authority at the end of last week.
Q633 Chairman: What is your view
of their findings?
Dr Wadge: In our view, based on
that independent scientific expert advice, it does not present
a risk and is safe to use.
Chairman: Thank you very much indeed.
I am coming back to question 3, I am sorry, and we need to move,
Committee, now. Thank you very much, that was a very interesting
section.
Q634 Bob Spink: Dame Deirdre, could
you just clarify, did you say there was 67% public trust in the
FSA earlier?
Dame Deirdre Hutton: When we did
the last consumer survey it was 67% and it had increased 8% in
a year. That is trust in the ability of the Agency to ensure food
safety.
Q635 Bob Spink: You said that was
quite high.
Dame Deirdre Hutton: It is not
bad, compared to many other levels of trust in society.
Chairman: That is putting him in his
place.
Q636 Bob Spink: Compared to trusting,
perhaps, the political bodies, you are right, but compared to
trusting independent bodies that are set up to defend the public
interest, I would put to you that that would be quite low in fact,
very concerningly low; do you think that is because the advice
coming out from various scientific bodies is changing all the
time, like red wine is good, red wine is bad? It focuses on things
depending on the circumstances evolving.
Dame Deirdre Hutton: I must say
to you first of all that compared with the experience of another
FSA, 67% feels pretty high and it is going up, which is the really
important thing. For consumers the range of advice that comes
out is very, very difficult and that is partly a problem with
the media, is it not, that they will pick things up and report
them so you get 27 different stories about diet in the media each
week, which does make it very difficult, hence our role in things
like signpost labelling.
Bob Spink: We politicians like to blame
everything on the media, do we not?
Chairman: We will come back to the media.
Q637 Bob Spink: You have produced
this 29-point science checklist. I am a scientist, I have read
through it, it is an exercise in the pretty obvious, I guess—for
instance, "Has a comprehensive literature survey been undertaken?"
That is about Key Stage 3, is it not? I just wondered, what was
wrong with the Chief Scientific Adviser's guidelines for scientific
analysis and policy-making?
Dame Deirdre Hutton: Can I just
explain the genesis of the scientific checklist? It started because
I was aware that we did not have on the board—partly because
I have replaced John Krebs but also just the make-up of the board
in general—many people, in fact only one person, with a
scientific background. Therefore, in its role of holding science
as well as everything else to account, the board needed to know
what questions to ask effectively, so the development of the scientific
checklist was very much about giving board members a tool for
interrogating science when it came to the board.
Q638 Bob Spink: Can I come back to
my question then, Dame Deirdre, what is wrong with the guidelines
on scientific analysis and policy-making which the Government's
Chief Scientific Adviser has put forward and which I would suggest
would be probably as comprehensive as yours?
Dame Deirdre Hutton: There probably
is not anything wrong with them, but this was something we developed
internally according to what the board members said they wanted.
We then floated it with the chairs of the independent scientific
committees who, having initially been slightly suspicious of it
as an approach, actually became rather positive about it, but
Andrew could talk about that.
Dr Wadge: We very much work with
the Office of Science and Innovation and the key scientific guidelines
on how we do science are ones that we follow very closely, and
we have been able in the past to highlight specific examples of
how we use science in developing policies.
Q639 Bob Spink: Is this checklist
based on their scientific analysis in policy-making?
Dr Wadge: It addresses a very
specific thing that is slightly different from the purpose of
the OSI guidelines, which is around what are the types of specific
questions that the board members need to ask themselves when assessing
a scientific issue, and we need to remember we are dealing with
a whole range of complex issues from scientific information about
front of pack labelling and what consumers are saying about that,
information about atypical scrapie and very complex scientific
information with uncertainties, so it is how do we (as in we the
board) weigh up on what might be from a wide variety of different
quantitative and qualitative research? How do we know the different
types of research and how do you weight those? It is really just
going through a systematic way of assessing that; it is an aide
memoir basically for that.
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