Hansard

Good morning, convener, and members of the committee. I know some of you quite well, but I recognise that the committee membership has been refreshed since our attendance in January last year, so I will take a couple of minutes to introduce us and the work of FSS. In addition to Geoff Ogle and me, and recognising that the committee is very interested in diet and health, we are joined by our chief nutritionist and head of our public health nutrition department, Gillian Purdon, who some of you might already know. Food Standards Scotland was established in April 2015, under the Food (Scotland) Act 2015, as the new public sector food body for Scotland. We are a non-ministerial office of the Scottish Administration, independent from Scottish Government ministers and from industry, and accountable to the Scottish Parliament. Our three key objectives are: to protect the public from risks to health, which may arise in connection with the consumption of food; to improve the extent to which members of the public have diets that are conducive to good health; and to protect the other interests of consumers in relation to food. FSS is Scotland’s independent public sector food body, and we collaborate closely with the Scottish Government, Public Health Scotland, the Food Standards Agency, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the UK Health Security Agency and food businesses in Scotland to represent Scotland’s interests in food-related issues at home, at UK level and abroad. Our purpose is public health protection. We have an annual budget of £22.7 million which, apart from an injection of £7 million to deal with the consequences of leaving the European Union, has remained unchanged from our original allocation in 2015 of £15.7 million. Seventy-six per cent of our budget relates directly to staff costs. We employ around 290 staff, which is a decrease of approximately 26 staff since our report last year. Approximately half of our staff work in operational settings, such as abattoirs, where they give direct oversight to food production and ensure that food and animal feed are safe and compliant with food legislation. Our other staff work to develop—and help others develop—policies on food and animal feed. They advise the Scottish Government, other authorities and the public on food, feed and public health nutrition; they provide guidance to the Scottish public and users of animal feed to help them make informed decisions about food and feedstuffs; they investigate and disrupt criminal activity in the food supply chain; and they monitor the performance of food enforcement authorities. Our annual report and accounts were laid before Parliament last November and summarised our performance for 2022-23. It was a period of challenge, in which we continued to address the knock-on effects of the UK’s exit from the EU and to reset our priorities, as inflation, increasing demand and a fixed budget made it essential for us to focus on the key areas of work for FSS. I commend the involvement of our staff in developing clarity and a vision of the way forward for the organisation. That work will continue, as we recognise the need for the public sector to be as efficient as possible and to seek further opportunities to modernise and make best use of emerging technology. Last year, we also published our second joint report on food standards, “Our Food 2022”, in conjunction with the Food Standards Agency. I am pleased to inform the committee that the third report will be available next month. It is a data and evidence-based annual status report, which tracks the safety and standards of food in the UK and aims to ensure that consumers and parliamentarians remain sighted on the main changes and threats to our food system. Since we last met, the FSS board has approved a new public health nutrition strategy, which is designed to deliver our statutory duty to improve the extent to which the public have diets that are conducive to good health in Scotland. We have engaged with a wide range of stakeholders to develop the strategy and encourage collaboration and a drive towards improved nutritional health in Scotland. As part of our work to protect consumers from food safety risks, we also created a new online allergen training tool to support food businesses and give their staff a better understanding of food hypersensitivities. We delivered a number of risk assessments on various food products, on issues such as listeria in smoked fish and blue cheese, and updated our advice to the public on safe consumption of those foods. In response to a request from the minister for advice on the diet-associated recommendations from the Climate Change Committee, FSS commissioned research from the University of Edinburgh. That research has been widely acclaimed, and I believe that we might discuss it a little further during today’s session. Other consumer-facing campaigns included: the promotion of the risks of campylobacter to vulnerable groups; the campaign to promote the consumption of vitamin D supplements; and a farm incident prevention campaign, to protect livestock from the deadly consequences of lead poisoning. The year ahead presents both challenges and opportunities for FSS. The shortage of vets across the nation continues to challenge us. We are working closely with all relevant bodies to find longer-term solutions, but the short-term measures to fill the gap are not only financially costly; more importantly, they cause stress for our existing staff. The capacity and resilience of the food law enforcement regime remains compromised. Local authorities continue to have difficulty filling vacancies. An increasing workload, when councils have significant budget challenges, has placed local authority environment health teams in a precarious position. The need to modernise our food law enforcement system continues to be a priority, and we have been working hard to find a source of funding to finance a transformation in food law enforcement. In the meantime, to minimise the risks, we remain in close contact with our local authority partners. I think that I have said enough by way of an introduction, and do not wish to take up any more of the committee’s time. I look forward to our discussion this morning.