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While the Food Standards Agency(FSA) has clearly had it successes in reestablishing consumer confidence in British food in the short time it has been in existence, it may be pushing its luck in attempting to work its magic on other food issues (600 words).

A survey undertaken by the British FSA found that only four percent of consumers cite, "off the top of their heads", food safety concerns as the most important factor that influenced their food purchases. Price was cited by 46 percent which exceeded the sum of taste, quality and family health, the next highest priorities.

The Food Standards Agency was set up in April 2000 to "protect public health from risks which may arise in connection with the consumption of food, and otherwise to protect the interests of consumers in relation to food." The agency was first muted in early 1997 in the wake of the BSE, mad cow disease, crisis when food safety concerns, particularly for beef, were headline news.

Making sense of surveys such as these is hazardous. This was highlighted by response to a similar but prompted food purchase influence question in which food safety rose from tenth to third place, while price slipped from first to sixth place and the environment rose from thirteenth to fifth.

Understandably the FSA was content just to list the results and not to draw conclusions. But it could just be that most of the 46 percent who cited price really had no concerns about how British food is produced, processed and presented. And, like that dream car, suit or holiday, they only wish it was a little cheaper.

The FSA claimed the purpose of the survey was "to find out what consumers want and what they really think about their food." This might seem to be somewhat peripheral to their mandate. But the FSA sees itself as having an important role to play in a post foot and mouth disease debate on the future of food and farming in the United Kingdom. Its interpretation of protecting the interest of consumers might, therefore, seem to extend well beyond food safety.

This is also evident from the Talk Food web site it has set up to foster debate. The public are invited to comment on six issues only one of which relates to food safety.

With the survey indicating that food safety is only foremost in the minds of four percent of food purchasers, the success of the FSA in conjunction with the food industry, or vice versa, is undeniable. To date it has busied itself with a wide range of issues mostly very directly related to food safety and with commendable success.

The FSA was established with considerable independence so that it would not be subject to the kind of pressures that the food industry has been accused of applying to government in the past. This independence also seems to allow the FSA to be liberal with the interpretation of its mandate.

The FSA will certainly raise its public profile by being drawn into environmental, animal welfare and other such issues popular with activists and, therefore, the press and media. The danger for the FSA in doing this is that it may ruffle the feathers of some of those in the industry on whom it depends in the fulfilment of its food safety mandate. And it may lose its focus on what everybody would agree is its primary mandate. And if it becomes unstuck on a peripheral issue, it will lose some of the credibility it has been successful in creating.

October 8, 2001