FSA Chief Executive on Radio 4

It was on the Radio 4 programme “You and Yours” and Stephen Rossides of the BMPA was given the opportunity to comment on what Smith had pre-recorded. The transcript is reproduced below. It is not what would normally be expected from the CEO of a government department.

There was no mention that meat inspection does not control the main risks from meat; no mention that the cost of the controls is out of all proportion to the value they add; and no explanation of why if the cost of food controls is normally covered by business rates, slaughterhouses have to pay business rates and meat inspection charges.

Smith did pluck a figure out the air for the cost reduction FSA has made for the industry since the Tierney Review – £13.5 million. At the time of the Tierney Review official controls cost £56.7 million, now Tim is saying they cost £60 million – actually an increase at a time when industry has contracted and the cost of Official Veterinarians to the FSA has decreased!

However perhaps the most worrying aspect of the interview was Smith giving out a very clear message that not only does he not trust industry, he also would not trust third parties to carry out controls. The reality is that third parties already provide nearly all the OVs and many of the meat inspectors FSA uses at the present time!

Apparently Smith had refused to be involved in a debate on air with industry, but after he had spoken Stephen Rossides was given the opportunity to add a bit of sense, so hopefully the consumers listening will not have been totally hoodwinked.

Scottish Association of Meat Wholesalers (SAMW) Office bearers are busily working on a robust response to the current full cost recovery consultation but we are also considering other options at our disposal.

TRANSCRIPT
WINIFRED ROBINSON: Presenter
The full cost of abattoir inspections should be passed back to the meat industry; that is, according to the Food Standards Agency. Like lots of other bodies it is trying to cut its costs but the meat producers say that they can't afford to take on any more.
Tim Smith is the Chief Executive of the Food Standards Agency. Tim Smith, tell us, then, what happens in these inspections?

TIM SMITH: Chief Executive, Food Standards Agency
Well essentially what the FSA is there to do is to protect consumers from risks that might arise from the production of meat, so we're there to act as a regulator to ensure, again, that whenever meat's being produced for consumers it's as safe as it possibly can be, and vets and meat inspectors are”¦ are tasked by European regulations, and by us, to be present whenever meat is being produced.

WINIFRED ROBINSON:
So who is paying for all this at the moment and what does it cost?

TIM SMITH:
Well roughly speaking, of the £60 million or so it costs the industry, taxpayers, through the FSA subsidy, are replaying [sic] about £32 million of that back into the system. So”¦ so the industry is paying less than half of the total amount and taxpayers, through the funding of the FSA, are paying the remaining £32 million.

WINIFRED ROBINSON:
Why then should the meat industry start paying for the whole lot now, because lots and lots of inspection regimes are funded by the taxpayer, aren't they?

TIM SMITH:
Well, no, not really. I think you'll find that”¦

WINIFRED ROBINSON:
Well, a lot of food hygiene is; it's funded through local authorities, isn't it?

TIM SMITH:
Through business rates in the case of local authorities. The situation as far as the agency's concerned is we're the regulator, and it's always seemed strange to us and it's a basic principle that as a regulator you shouldn't subsidise the industry that you're charged with regulating, so we have no problem if somebody else thinks this is a good idea to subsidise a particular part of the food supply chain but we're emphatic that it should not be the Food Standards Agency.

WINIFRED ROBINSON:
Now, what your critics say is that you have created a very costly bureaucracy that you're now expecting them to fund.

TIM SMITH:
Well, look, in part I think it's important for your listeners to understand that that would have been true some years ago, that the regime that had been created, probably since 1996, did look over-costly, it did look like it needed trimming, and, in fact, we made a substantial amount of reduction to the costs of achieving those controls, so what used to cost £90 million now costs less than £60 million a year to do and of that about £13.5 million of a benefit has been passed back through to the industry. So we've”¦ as we have reached a point at which we're almost as clear as we can be that”¦ that regulation is as effective and as efficient as it possibly can be, then we think it's time for industry to start paying the full cost of that rather than being subsidised by taxpayers.

WINIFRED ROBINSON:
They also say if they”¦ if they're going to meet the full bill they'd like to choose who does it and put the whole thing out to tender.

TIM SMITH:
Well, would consumers”¦ would your listeners want third parties to be doing something as important as this? It's a question that will arise, I'm sure, throughout the next few years as”¦ as the process unwinds, but essentially what regulators do is protect consumers and there is no real market in that regulatory framework, and it would certainly worry some of us at the agency if we had to effectively outsource that to somebody else, and if I'm thinking about my family when I'm eating out and when I'm buying meat in supermarkets I think I'd rather it was somebody who was being paid for”¦ to do the job and regulated properly by a Government body, as it happens in this case, on behalf of the European Union.

WINIFRED ROBINSON:
Tim Smith from the Food Standards Agency, thank you.
We now have Stephen Rossides on, who speaks for the British Meat Processors. Tim Smith and the Food Standards Agency didn't want to enter into a debate with you here. You are very much trying to resist these changes. I've outlined a couple of your objections. What else?

STEPHEN ROSSIDES: Director, British Meat Processors Association
Well, first of all we fully recognise the pressure on public expenditure in these difficult economic times and our”¦ our members, our abattoirs, are responsible for delivering safe food; there's no question of that but there is also a public good here as well. We're delivering safe food and I think it's reasonable that the public purse shares some of the cost of delivering that public good. But for our members, they are happy to pay for an efficient and customer-focused service, i.e. meat inspections – they're happy to pay for that – but at the moment they have no choice of the service provider; the FSA is a high-cost monopoly service deliverer of these”¦ these inspections with all the high staffing, all the”¦ all the comparatively generous terms and conditions, pensions and pension liabilities and so forth that go with that, and our industry is being asked to carry those costs as well.

WINIFRED ROBINSON:
What about Tim Smith's point that the public just simply doesn't trust you? I mean, abattoirs, they're not the most”¦

STEPHEN ROSSIDES:
Well, I”¦

WINIFRED ROBINSON:
open places in the world, are they? If you, as a journalist, tried to get into one you'd find it very difficult.

STEPHEN ROSSIDES:
Yes, this is an incredibly highly regulated industry. No food goes into the food chain without proper inspection and that it's safe, there's no question of that, there is no short”¦ short-cutting of that. I was sorry to hear Tim scaremongering, effectively, actually here, scaring people”¦

WINIFRED ROBINSON:
Well, no, how can you”¦ but how could you realistically have an inspection regime that is both commissioned and paid for by an industry?

STEPHEN ROSSIDES:
Because service deliverers would have to be approved, they would have to meet all the standards required, and ultimately under EU law, the Food Standards Agency in this country is what is known as the “competent authority”; it would have to audit those. It's not”¦ it would not be off the scene entirely. This is not, you know, leaving the industry to self-regulate. There is still a framework of law and rules here, but what we're saying is that the FSA should perform an audit role but does not necessarily have to perform all the operational costs itself with all the costs that are attached to that.

WINIFRED ROBINSON:
It's out for consultation. Briefly, if you would, when will it be decided?

STEPHEN ROSSIDES:
Well, the consultation closes on 1 February, I believe. The”¦ this matter will go to the FSA board. They want to implement it from the 1 January next year but I don't think”¦ the debate is not over and should be not”¦ not be over. This is going to have incredible implications for some people. One of my member's costs were”¦ will increase from about £310,000 a year to over £750,000 a year; that'll put them out of business.

WINIFRED ROBINSON:
Well, no doubt one we're going to come back to. Stephen Rossides, from the British Meat Processors Association, thanks for coming on.