Guest of honour speech, UKAS

Thursday 5 October 2006

UKAS Annual General Meeting Lunch, Marriott Hotel, Westminster Bridge, London.

I would like to start by paying tribute to the work of UKAS.

Its virtues and achievements are not often shouted from the rooftops, but it provides essential wiring of the sort that allows many other systems in society to work well.

So I would like to thank you for that work and, in particular, to recognise the variety of ways in which UKAS co-operates with the Agency - all of them to the benefit of the public in whose interests we work.

I hope I will leave this audience with three key messages, and a question:

• first, the Agency is a science and evidence-based organisation
• second UKAS accreditation is very important in enabling me to make that first statement
• third, accreditation plays a vital role in allowing us to deliver safe food and the healthier eating approaches that consumers want

The question concerns the challenges we face: the changing nature of the food chain, the optimum forms of regulation, the increased amount of eating out of the home. How might UKAS help us to meet those challenges?

The Agency's open Board meeting a couple of weeks ago provides a very clear illustration of our reliance on science, and your role.

One of the regular features of the Board is an update on events over the previous month from our Chief Executive, John Harwood.

John started with the imports of rice from the United States that have been found to contain trace amounts of unauthorised GM material.

No GM rice is approved for food use in the UK, so discussion revolved around our response, and touched on the need for suitably qualified laboratories to check that imports are GM-free.

Then John updated us on the big Sudan I product recall last year - Sudan I being the industrial dye that was contaminating spices'..which were used to make Worcestershire Sauce' - which was used in nearly 600 different processed foods.

So, again an issue that involved incredibly sensitive testing - this time for tiny amounts of a potentially carcinogenic chemical.

Then the Board moved on to BSE - and the screening programme introduced last year to replace the blanket ban on older cows going into the food chain. So far we have seen three OTM animals test positive; which is about what you would expect.

The screening programme, of course, requires not just accredited testing for BSE, but auditing of the whole system to ensure correlation between test results, animals and carcasses.

If we are to live up to our claim to be an evidence and science based organisation, then all of these issues should be - and are - the subject of expert scientists using sophisticated equipment and techniques.

But our confidence in those processes comes in part from the stamp of authority provided by accreditation.

In other words, UKAS provides the solid foundation of assurance on which we can rely in order to make good decisions - particularly in the area of enforcement.

So, although your side of the relationship between us may sound less obvious, it is as much a part of consumer protection as anything we do and has helped to underpin the improvement in consumer trust in food that we have seen over the past few years.

But the quality assurance you provide for our enforcement work, as I have outlined, is only a part of what you do with us.

In developing new policy - whether that is in the field of food safety or nutrition - we rely on research provided through our own scientists and through contracted out arrangements to other scientific institutions.

A significant proportion of our budget is committed to commissioning research and it is important that we get good research and good value for money.

UKAS helps us by providing quality assurance in the commissioning process.

But you are also helping us with audits of a number of research projects over the next two years and it will be very interesting and helpful to have the results of that work.

Let me turn now to the question. It seems to me that we face three significant challenges where UKAS might be able to help us.

First is the changing nature of the food chain. It is a truism to say that the food chain has become globalised. But there is still thinking to be done on the consequences of that and how we assure a safe food supply for consumers.

The issue over Sudan I last year illustrated the problems that can arise from the addition of different ingredients - sometimes very small - from different parts of the world.

Given that the Agency increasingly believes that it is right to place responsibility on the providers of food to assure safety, how can UKAS help to give us a degree of comfort in the global arena?

Second is regulation. Which brings me back to the recent Board meeting. If you had been sufficiently enthusiastic, and tuned in to the live webcast you would have seen us discussing the Agency's approach to regulation - and our plans for simplifying the burdens that regulation and enforcement place on others.

Clearly, consumer protection is the first priority for us and one that cannot be compromised.

But it is also clear that regulation that is confused, contradictory or just plain difficult to implement - in that it runs counter to the natural approaches of companies - will not enhance consumer protection.

So the desire for simplified regulation is not a watering down, rather it is a search to find better ways of conducting regulation and enforcement that will be easier to implement and therefore more likely to enhance consumer protection.

Probably the best example of that is the switch to BSE testing, which I've already mentioned briefly.

BSE has been central to public confidence in food. So the whole process of being able to recommend a switch to testing hung on being able to show authoritatively that testing would offer equivalent protection to the existing Over-Thirty-Months ban on older, higher risk cattle going into the food chain.

To do that we needed to be able to demonstrate the reliability of the test methodology and the robustness of the testing regime - both of which were underpinned by UKAS accreditation.

So for the same level of risk, we estimate the switch will benefit farmers by about
40m a year in increased revenue, and generate cost savings to Government of between
200m and
300m a year for the next few years. The cost of regulation is paid for in the end by the public.

Another aspect of regulation concerns the weight that we as an Agency can sensibly place on self-regulation or industry assurance schemes.

For example, you can be pretty certain that the good retailers operate a rigorous audit system with their suppliers and you can make a very good argument to say that we should rely on that.

But what else is there that we should feel comfortable about relying on?

The farm assurance schemes that are accredited by UKAS are a strong possibility.

We are currently consulting on a proposal to minimise local authority inspection for primary producers that are members of one of these specific schemes.

Finally catering. More and more eating is done out of the home - either on the basis of choice, or in a single location (schools, hospitals, in-house catering).

This summer we passed something of a milestone, according to official statistics. For the first time, more money was spent in the UK on food consumed outside of the home than on food consumed at home.

Both in the areas of food safety and nutrition, there is a real challenge to make advances in the food service sector.

Are there ways in which UKAS's work can be extended to this sector in the interests of preserving consumer safety and helping consumers to make healthier choices?

In conclusion, let me go back to those three messages and a question.

The work you do enables us to be a science and evidence-based organisation and underpins much of our research and policy making.

It helps us deliver safer, healthier food to consumers.

For this vital help, I thank you and look forward to continued co-operation.

For the question, I don't necessarily expect an answer in the next five minutes - I am a reasonable person!

But I am clear that there are continued challenges ahead for the Agency and that UKAS is in a strong position to help us.