Food safety watch-dog

Food safety issues – BSE, food poisoning and pesticide residues – have caused concern across Europe. In April 2000, the UK government responded to the crisis by setting up a Food Standards Agency (FSA), to champion consumer concerns. In this article David Buffin interviewed chief pesticide scientist Julie Norman of the FSA to discover if the practice meets the promise. We highlight problems associated with residues in salmon and trout (see page 16) both of which are monitored by the FSA. 

Consumers food safety concerns
In January 2001, the FSA produced its first annual survey of consumer attitudes on food standards and safety. The study shows that consumers are rarely well informed about food safety and healthy eating. However they do want more information on chemicals in food and food hygiene.
    Food poisoning and BSE were the issues of most concern to the greatest number of people, with 60% mentioning one of these. Nearly half indicated their concern with pesticides.

Situation echoed in Europe
In Europe, worries about food safety have also been raised. The European Union has proposed an independent European Food Authority that may have a far-reaching effect on pesticide use. In Germany, concerns over BSE have directly led to pesticide policy shifting from the Ministry of Agriculture to the Ministry of Health. 

Pesticides policy at the FSA
When the FSA was being set up, the government decided that responsibility for policy on pesticides and veterinary medicines (such as sheep dips) would not be transferred into its remit. This decision was criticised by public interest groups (see PN 38 p17). The FSA says it has taken the role of ‘watchdog’ on the food safety responsibilities of the Pesticides Safety Directorate (PSD) and the Veterinary Medicines Directorate (VMD) (and their committees) on behalf of consumers.
    Pesticide-related committees at PSD include the Advisory Committee on Pesticides and the Pesticides Residues Committee; and at VMD they include the Veterinary Products Committee and Veterinary Residues Committee.

What consumers want 
At the end of September 2000, officials at the FSA carried out a series of telephone interviews with consumer groups (including PAN UK), and groups with a special interest in pesticides and veterinary medicine residues in food. Respondents were asked what they would like the FSA to achieve. There was general agreement that the FSA should press for much greater openness and transparency in the operation of committee proceedings. Interviewees also asked that the FSA should:

• press for lower residues in food and support keeping the use of pesticides and veterinary medicines to a minimum;
• investigate ‘the cocktail effect’ and long-term effects of exposure to low levels of these substances (this work has already started, see page 17);
• be active in both research and surveillance, including increasing sample sizes when testing for pesticide residues.

The FSA response
In December 2000, the FSA Board discussed many consumer concerns about pesticides in an open forum meeting. By February 2001 the Agency published its policy, which accepted the use of pesticides and veterinary medicines in food production only if:

• Regulatory bodies follow a precautionary approach (see pages 12-13);
• The regulatory process is open and the way decisions are reached is easily understandable by consumers;
• Any residues that occur in food:

• Do not result in consumers exceeding safety standards set by the regulatory bodies;
• Are the minimum that result from effective use, even if higher levels would not be harmful; and
• Decisions about approvals and the acceptability of residues are subject to review in the light of new data. 

• The Agency would not agree to the use of any pesticide if fruit and vegetables treated with it have to be washed or peeled to make them safe to eat. (Current government advice recommends peeling of fruit and vegetables to avoid pesticide residues.)

Julie Norman provided insights into FSA positions on pesticides

The FSA has been in existence for a year now, what have you achieved in this time in relation to pesticides?
We have actually achieved something important – a blow for independence for the surveillance programmes. Before the Agency was set up a review of the current situation by the Joint Food Safety and Standards Group recommended independent committee membership that reported its findings directly to ministers – not just civil servants. We were very pleased to see that happening so early on. One of our major tasks is making sure that we have the mechanisms in place that we need to make an impact, and that they work. 

The FSA can nominate members to the pesticide-related committees (the Advisory Committee on Pesticides (ACP), the Veterinary Products Committee (VPC), the Pesticides Residues Committee (PRC) and the Veterinary Residues Committee (VRC). Have you appointed anyone yet?
We advertised in mid-2000, and the interviews took place in October. People have been approached and the FSA’s Chairman and Deputy Chair have agreed the nominees. We are expecting an announcement soon.

What impact will the FSA nominated members have on these committees?
They are independent and are not mouthpieces for the FSA. Each nominee will provide another perspective from the consumer/lay point of view. Our role is to provide them with the support they need. The lay members do not always feel they have enough hands-on expertise to come to truly independent conclusions. We intend to supply our nominees with our thoughts and our assessments. Hopefully they will agree with us and be happy to support a similar line to the FSA at the meetings. They are going to have experience that we as officials do not have. The people that we have chosen are not just straightforward experts in risk assessment or food safety. We hope that they will be able to bring in expertise that complements the scientific expertise within the FSA itself.

What is the FSA doing to increase the trend towards openness at committees like the ACP and VPC?
We want as much information as possible made easily available and accessible to anybody who wants to see it. There need to be provisos. A limited amount of information needs to be kept secret because of commercial confidentiality, but we need an open debate to define what it should be. We are very much looking to what is becoming best practice in other parts of the Agency. For example, the Novel Foods System is much more along the road to openness than committees at either the PSD or VMD. 
    Certainly with regard to the VPC, the biggest impediment is Section 118 of the Medicines Act (which restricts public access to information on veterinary medicine products). The VMD has promised to take action to repeal this part of the Act. Section 118 of the Medicines Act has been in place since 1968 and reflects the importance which was given at that time to keeping the proceedings of regulatory committees confidential. The Food Standards Act 1999 does not give the Agency powers to override that legislation so whilst we might want to make a public comment on an issue that the VPC has considered, we cannot without the express permission of the members of the VPC. This seems to us to limit the effectiveness of our role in keeping consumers aware of veterinary medicines issues.

The membership of the ACP has been broadened, and the summary minutes and agenda are publicly available. In March 2000 ACP promised that the detailed minutes would be available , when can we expect to see these?
There was an experiment at the beginning (of the openness process) to release the detailed notes from the ACP meetings. PSD is consulting interested parties at the moment on whether the these should be released. Responses to the consultation paper issued last summer which included proposals for the detailed record of the discussions of ACP meetings to be made available, are currently being considered. PSD officials hope to put their recommendations to Ministers to consider shortly.
    The FSA’s view is that the full minutes should be made available, although the limit on commercial confidentiality needs to be defined. We have had discussions with industry, and their definition of commercial confidentiality is very different from our definition. There is a gap here which is hardly surprising. However, from what I have seen the gap is narrowing. The stumbling block with the release of the full minutes is a hiccup, but I think that the ACP and PSD are themselves committed to pushing for openness, and we will certainly prod them.

At what point should consumer representation be involved in the decision-making process? Should consumers be included at this stage of the discussions?
Not necessarily in the case of detailed discussion on individual substances because of commercial confidentiality. Certainly where confidentiality is not an issue, then we are very much in favour of making the basic information available to consumer groups in advance.
    Last year we interviewed consumer groups and other interest groups, to get their views on what the Agency should be doing. We want to get them involved in our policy-making from the outset.

The Substitution Principle requires that a pesticide should not be approved if another pesticide for the same product type, which in the light of scientific of technical knowledge, presents significantly less risk to health or the environment. What is the view of the FSA on the principle? 
We do see this as part of the Agency’s role. One of the things that we identified early on when we looked at the way that the regulatory system currently works is that it is very compartmentalised. The regulators look at one active ingredient and then they look at another in isolation – although the decisions that are taken for one compound might have repercussions for others. For example, in the current review of the anticholinesterase compounds [organophosphates and carbamates], the Agency would like the opportunity to consider the overall effects of the decisions taken on individual compounds. There is not a mechanism in place whereby this is formally considered. But things are changing, particularly in the ACP.

Pesticide residue surveillance in food is carried out by the PSD and VMD. The FSA plays a watchdog role. Are you planning to carry out your own residue surveillance as a way of checking up on these agencies?
We are not carrying out our own surveillance or research at the moment. What we are doing is reviewing the current surveillance systems as operated by both the PSD and VMD. When PRC and the VRC meet, we will present to them a paper setting out what the Agency thinks their programmes need to address and ultimately achieve. 

Are you going to try to increase the number of samples taken for residue analysis in food?
Yes, hopefully. There will always be a trade off between the number of different food samples that are analysed in any one-year, and the pesticides for which they are analysed. There is concern that not enough analysis is carried out in the current programmes. To some extent the Agency shares this view because it is very difficult for us to use the information on the levels in the foods to estimate consumer exposure. There are now guidelines which say that for minor foods you need to have data from at least 60 samples spread over at least two years, collected within the last five years, so that you are sure that is a sound data base. Because the different commodities for sample numbers were small in previous years, we cannot actually now use that data with 100% confidence. So in some circumstances we would like to see sample sizes go up. We appreciate that we cannot just increase the sample sizes across the board. So our review must consider where the balance should lie.
    We are carrying out the review and our initial aim is to influence the surveillance programmes which are set up by the new PRC and the VPC. If for whatever reason the things that the Agency thinks should be being done are not included in those programmes then it will be at that stage that we do the analysis ourselves.

Is the FSA considering carrying out residue analysis of organochlorine (OC) residues in farmed salmon, because scientists have found that levels could be significant for high consumers? (see page 16)
Farmed fish has been included in the pesticide surveillance programme over the years, so residues were looked at in 1991 and 1997, and, yes, they were finding residues of OCs. But the assessment was that the level discovered was comparable with levels in other food, unthreatening to human health. So on that basis we are not immediately intending to carry out surveys for OCs. Because farmed fish were last investigated in 1997, they will come up again for inclusion in the pesticides surveillance programme anyway. So in the absence of any health worries we will rely on that process.
    It is, however, interesting to consider why between the 1991 and 1997 survey, the incidence of OC residues went up. In 1991, 80% of salmon and 40% of trout contained detectable residues – yet for 1997, it was 100% for both of them. We would like to see changes like this investigated at the time of the analysis. This is an example of where we will try and have an impact on the pesticide programme.

Finally, in terms of pesticide policy, what would you like to see achieved over the next few years?
I want to see the barriers presented by Section 118 of the Medicines Act removed so that we can make some proper progress to opening up the Veterinary Medicine authorisations processes.
    There needs to be progress on the other issues that we have talked about on openness like encouraging consumer involvement before decisions are taken, and a mechanism whereby other groups can challenge decisions/regulatory systems, particularly prior to the decisions being taken.
    We should no longer be looking at the impacts of pesticides in isolation. I do not know whether this would include the Substitution Principle necessarily or whatever, but the Agency wants to see comparative assessment happen in some shape or form.

Julie Norman is joint head of the team addressing pesticide and veterinary medicine issues at the FSA, 
julie.norman@foodstandards.gsi.gov.uk 

[This article first appeared in Pesticides News No.51, March 2001, p14-15]