Annual Review 2009: Leading from the front
Industry in action
Food safety is our sector's top priority
Food safety remains at the core of our
advocacy work and we are very active
in representing members' interests in
negotiations on key pieces of proposed
European legislation as well as UK voluntary
measures.
Our work in Brussels includes recent
lobbying activities around the Food
Information Proposal, particularly in
relation to legibility, mandatory nutrition
labelling, national schemes and country
of origin information. We are also lobbying
on detailed aspects of the Novel Foods
Proposal and have been working very hard
with the European institutions to reach a
technical solution on genetically modified
low level presence.
Over the past year we have focused on
tackling issues on the timing, content and
enforcement of the Nutrition and Health
Claims Regulation which is already affecting
the full breadth of our membership. We have addressed this complex work
together
with
colleagues representing our sector groups
and associations to maximise our influence.
In the UK we have been influencing the
development of policy and its impact on
our sector through frequent and targeted
meetings with FSA officials, Government
advisors, stakeholders and other experts.
We have also responded to an increasing
number of consultations particularly in the
areas of reformulation, labelling, hygiene,
allergens and enforcement.
FDF submitted oral and written evidence to
the House of Lords Science and Technology
Committee on Nanotechnologies and Food.
In parallel, our engagement both in the UK
and Europe on new technologies continues
to be one of the areas that generate most
public interest.
The work of the Food Safety and Science
Division has been particularly visible in a
number of technical areas where we have
been able to identify issues and provide
practical solutions. Colleagues have
contributed to and developed guidance
documents on food improvement agents,
food contact materials and food to feed
manufacturing. In addition we switched
from monitoring to action in the area of
process contaminants, where controversial
measures proposed by the Commission
are currently being re-examined as a direct result of our lobbying activities,
including
timely provision of information.
We continue to represent members'
interests in our work on incident
management and prevention both through
constant interactions with FSA officials
and through careful scrutiny of the Rapid
Alert System for Food and Feed and other
international incident notification schemes,
which have resulted in FDF submitting
recommendations to the European
Commission on how to improve their
system. Through the work of the incident
management group we continue to push
the FSA for a more proactive approach to
incident prevention and assist FSA officials
in keeping their incident procedures up to
date and under scrutiny.
In this review
FDF: steered by our members -
- By Jim Moseley, Managing Director, General Mills UK
- By Fiona Dawson, Managing Director, Mars Chocolate UK
- By John Sutcliffe, Chief Executive, ABF Grocery
- By Jonathan Bye, Managing Director, Vimto
- By Paul Freeston, Chief Executive, apetito
Industry in action:
More information