New Bill strengthens power of Food Safety Authority and provides for tough sanctions

The Food Safety Authority has been given new powers to ensure the safety of food products; the sanctions include fines of up to £100,000 and imprisonment. The provisions are detailed in the Food Safety Authority of Ireland Bill 1998, which passed both Houses of the Oireachtas on Wednesday night. The authority, which has been operating on an interim basis, will assume full powers on January 1st next, according to the Department of Health and Children, to which it is accountable.

The Bill empowers the authority to ensure that food produced, marketed and distributed in the State meets the highest standards of safety and hygiene. It transfers all responsibility for national food safety to the authority and gives it powers to oversee and trace food production from the farm to the consumer.

It gives the authority powers to inspect premises, impose fines, demand that producers make changes to raise standards, and the power to close a premises and withdraw food products where a danger is suspected to public health. Non-compliance could lead to up to 12 months' imprisonment.

A novel aspect of its brief would be the issuing of "service contracts", its chief executive, Dr Patrick Wall, said yesterday. It will issue contracts to any authority or body with an existing food safety role, such as health boards, veterinary officers and public health doctors.

"The whole idea is to harmonise everything so that everything is being done to the same standards," Dr Wall said. "It will be phased in" from the beginning of January, he said. He expected there would be need for negotiations with bodies providing services in the area of food safety, particularly if it was felt that service quality standards could not be met on budgetary grounds.

"There will be no transfer of staff from the local authorities to the authority," he said, nor would the authority be paying to have these services carried out. Rather, the authority would be co-ordinating the application of food safety services and would be demanding "activity reports" from its contractors.

There would be full accountability at every stage from farm to table, Dr Wall said. "We will be auditing everything that they do."

The authority currently has a budget of £2 million, but this was inadequate to fund the role it would have, Dr Wall said. "At the moment we are costing the bill and this will become part of Government planning." He anticipated that a staff of between 80 and 100 would be required to do its job properly.

A board of nine appointed by the Minister for Health and Children will govern the authority. It will have a committee of 15 scientists to examine food safety issues and assess risks. The Bill also allows the creation of a 24-member consultative council, with 12 members each appointed by the authority and the Government.

The council, Dr Wall said, would oversee authority activities and ensure transparency of its work and give consumers a strong voice on food safety issues.

Key activities for the authority, he said, included the control of the service agreements, the collection of data on human and animal illness and food-borne disease, and both to educate and advise on food safety. There was much to be done on "empowering the consumer", he said. "I don't think the consumers understand the power they have."

"While the primary purpose of the legislation is the protection of consumers, the Government also recognises that one of the best ways of promoting the entire Irish food sector is to put in place a strong, independent and science-based Food Safety Authority," the Minister of State for Health and Children, with responsibility for food safety, Dr Tom Moffat, said in a statement yesterday.

Some of the Bill's provisions were criticised by the ail Fine Gael spokesman on health and food safety, Mr Paul Bradford, who said it would be a "bureaucratic mess". The Government, he said, was "setting up an extra level of bureaucracy" which would not help food safety.