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Annual Review 2008: Food safety at the heart of our work

Food safety and science remains at the core of our advocacy work and we are very active representing members' interests in negotiations on key pieces of proposed regulation and legislation.

Much of our work is focused on Brussels, with recent activities including our lobbying around detailed aspects of the Food Improvement Agents Package and the Novel Foods proposal – both of which are critical to the future use of key ingredients and technologies.

FDF has been heavily involved in the work of our European organisation, CIAA, in developing positions on the use of nanotechnology, and we will ensure that our industry's voice is heard in the ongoing House of Lords inquiry on this topic.

In addition, our well-considered position on the EU Food Information proposal has been highly influential in guiding CIAA towards its own position and we are actively influencing this complex negotiation.

Meanwhile, FDF has been working closely with the FSA Chief Scientist and his team to ensure that industry is able to contribute to the scientific evaluation of new regulatory processes and is consulted on developments at times when our expertise can be most useful.

We have also been active in the area of incident management during the past year. We have been consulted by the Food Standards Agency on ways to ensure incidents are kept to a minimum and, indeed, reduce over time. As a result of this dialogue, we have developed a new forum – the Incident Prevention Working Group – which will take forward ideas of potential value to the FSA and industry. At the same time, we have also developed a new tool for members, allowing them to interrogate the RASFF (Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed) notification alerts in a more powerful way.

Towards the end of 2008, an incident involving dioxins in Irish pork meant that FDF worked tirelessly to ensure that our members were able to respond to developments in an appropriate and timely fashion. We have ensured that our sector has been recognised for the prompt action it took to protect consumers. On a positive note, we have also worked hard to build further trust between industry and its regulator through a process of horizon scanning that helps us both foresee potential future issues and deal with them in a proportionate way.

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