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Jack Cunningham: no hijacker⃛ Credit: UNIVERSAL PICTORIAL

The UK ministry of agriculture, fisheries and food (MAFF) has strenuously denied suggestions that it is seeking to retain influence over a planned independent food standards agency. The agency has been proposed by the government in a bid to increase the separation between policy on food safety and agricultural interests, in the wake of the bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) crisis.

Erik Millstone, a researcher at the Science Policy Research Unit at the University of Sussex, who is one of Britain's leading food policy experts, last week said that he was concerned that MAFF appeared to be closely involved in deciding the final structure of the agency. He also voiced fears that “main positions” in the agency might be staffed with officials holding comparable posts within MAFF. Consumer organizations have also suggested that parts of MAFF are uneasy at the prospect of losing responsibility for food safety and are keen for the ministry to retain oversight of the new agency.

But a senior MAFF official rejects these suggestions. Millstone's comments, he claims, represented a misunderstanding of some recent changes within MAFF.

One such change has been MAFF's decision to enlarge its food safety group by bringing together civil servants involved in different aspects of food standards from both MAFF and the department of health. But the official insists that this is an “interim arrangement” to improve the government's management of food safety “not a pre-emptive strike” to influence the structure of the food agency.

He says that Jack Cunningham, the secretary of state for agriculture, is committed to “changing the culture of the ministry, and moving in a new direction”, and that the food standards agency will be set up after an exhaustive public consultation. “Ministers are committed to an independent agency”, he says, “There is no way that MAFF is trying to hijack the process.”

An independent food agency was proposed in a report by Philip James, director of the Rowett Research Institute in Aberdeen, Scotland, commissioned by the Labour party shortly before the May general elections, as part of its proposals to rectify the loss of confidence in British food policy.

The document envisages that the agency would need to employ experienced civil servants from government departments, such as MAFF. But it adds that such staff would need to “acquire rapidly a culture where public health and consumer interests clearly dominate whilst proper account is taken of economic and business interests”.

MAFF believes this is a sensible recommendation. But Millstone says there needs to be a break with the past.