High-Ranking Advisor Criticizes Shortcomings Of FSA

By Sam Lewis

There is much uproar regarding the scientific expertise, or lack of, currently at the Food Standards Agency from reductions in government funding. Many believe the budget cuts have left the FSA with a severe shortage of skilled professionals in its science and policy groups.

Last month’s board meeting for the Food Standards Agency (FSA) was quite interesting. Chairman of the FSA’s General Advisory Committee on Science (GACS), Professor Sir Colin Blakemore, vividly stated his complaints about the problem of inadequate levels of scientific staff members at the agency. Blakemore claims there are nearly 75 vacant positions essential to supporting science endeavors at the FSA. “There’s a problem with staffing, particularly in scientific staffing,” says Blakemore. “I hope the FSA will move as quickly as it can to fill these positions.” Some of these empty positions are because of “natural wastage,” however, most are due to the organization’s budget cuts, according to Blakemore.

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Blakemore isn’t the only one criticizing the FSA and its staffing issues, but the agency sees Blakemore’s points, but disagrees with his claims. “Since the year of the horsemeat incident [2013], through to the end of 2015/16, the FSA’s overall budget will have reduced by 22 million pounds (nearly 36 million USD),” says FSA chief operations officer Andrew Rhodes. Despite the staffing deficiency and budget cuts, the FSA is currently hiring as many as 54 positions, with most of those postings being the result of rearrangement within the organization over the summer.

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Currently, the agency has about 1,300 staff members. With that, the agency is certain it will be able to follow through with its operations and policy-making duties through activity prioritization, restructuring groups, and utilizing resources already at the agencies disposal. The GACS — a separate entity from the FSA created to advise the FSA on collecting and using science research — will put a bigger focus on monitoring the FSA’s scientific endeavors. Blakemore agrees with this stance, stating GACS worked more closely with the FSA than it normally would during the horsemeat scandal. “For the past year, GACS has been close to the normal processes of the agency,” says Blakemore. “But we need to take a step back and become more aggressive in our commentary of what the agency is doing.”