Scottish Food Advisory Committee – 4 September 2012

Tim Smith has left and Catherine Brown will take over as Chief Executive on 16th October. In the interim the Director in Scotland, Charles Milne is acting Chief Executive Elspeth MacDonald has moved up to be acting Director in Scotland during Charles absence.

Jim Wildgoose also commented on the route towards a separate FSA in Scotland. He admitted that the timescale is rather protracted. A consultation will be issued towards the end of this year. A 12 week period for responses would follow and then legislation might go through in the Autumn of 2012. Royal consent could take to 2014 and so FSA Scotland as a separate entity might come into being in Autumn 2014 but could be spring 2015.

A video link allowed the Committee to hear Andrew Rhodes present paper on Strategy on Charging for Meat Official Controls. He described this paper as “about what happens next” following the FSA's proposals for the introduction of full cost recovery for meat official controls not receiving the necessary regulatory approvals.

Andrew described the current system as inequitable and said that three things would now happen –

1. Review of the Discount System. He claimed that £11.2m was locked into the system creating disincentives.
2. Review of efficiencies involving National Audit Office.
3. Explore derogations available to see if there are other ways to deliver these controls and provide better value for money.

Carrie Rixton asked Andrew Rhodes if UK vets working in abattoirs were required to be trained to a higher standard than those working on the continent of Europe. He said that they all had to be trained to certain standards but concede that a large number of vets working in UK abattoirs came from Spain, Portugal and Eastern Europe. In UK public health vets are not a career choice of UK vets so claimed that there was no gold plating of standards in UK.

Carrie also asked if enhanced training was given to Meat Hygiene Inspectors could this reduce the need for as many Official Veterinarians. Andrew replied that EU regulations do not allow this although there would be no practical reasons where MHIs could do an OV's job.

The efficiency review will need to address the anomalies created at the time when charges moved from headage to time based charges. Some plants have reduced numbers of OV's but still receive the same subsidy because of the historic promise. The scheme is flawed but changes will affect large and very large plants most.

Ian Anderson asked the Committee to remember the case for smaller abattoirs. Andrew Rhodes replied that EU legislation did provide for support for small abattoirs and it could be that some of these smaller abattoirs could be in need of greater subsidy because of their remote nature.