Rooker plea to keep the FSA independent

Launching the Food Standards Agency's (FSA's) science and evidence strategic plan for the next five years at an event in London last month, chairman Jeff Rooker made a passionate call for its future independence to be maintained.

Rooker's plea comes amid widespread expectations that an incoming Conservative government, if elected, would transfer the FSA's nutritional responsibilities to a new Department of Public Health.

A growing number of industry commentators suspect the Tories will restructure the FSA as part of their plans to cut the UK's record £178bn fiscal deficit, leaving what remains to concentrate solely on food safety issues.

"People would never trust us if they thought we were operating by a political hunch rather than scientific evidence," said Rooker.

"That's why it's so important that we, legally a government department, answer to parliament through the Department of Health and not to the Department of Health: that's the way we are legally structured and that's the way we want to maintain it."

FSA chief executive Tim Smith, however, admitted that priorities had been set for the five outcomes announced in the strategic plan so that, if forced to, those towards the bottom could be dropped. "But those outcomes have been prioritised and in a 'nuclear situation' we would end up with our first principle being food safety," said Smith.

Highlighting achievements, Rooker cited the 0.9g a day reduction in salt intake which has saved an estimated 6,000 lives a year via reduced coronary heart disease as evidence of the FSA's value for money. "That's a saving of about £1.5bn to the economy every year," he said.