Date Published: 16 February 2009
Restructuring of the Agency's Food Safety Group
At last week's open Board meeting, FSA Chief Scientist and Director of Food Safety, Andrew Wadge, spoke about the recent restructuring of the Food Safety Group. This organisational change brings together work on aspects of food safety that was previously spread across the Agency.
The new structure brings together hygiene, microbiology, contaminants and other work that had previously been divided between two different groups – the Food Safety Group and the former Consumer Protection and Enforcement Group.
The merger of these two groups has provided the opportunity to better organise
the Agency’s food safety work and align resources to the new strategic
plan priorities to maximise impact in improving public health in relation to
food safety.
New structure
The new Food Safety Group has two divisions that address the two broad categories of agents that can cause food to become unsafe (namely microbiological and non-microbiological agents). It also has a cross-cutting division that deals with the implementation and delivery of effective controls on these two aspects of food safety. This division will work closely with the Veterinary and Technical Division in the Meat Hygiene Service, which performs a similar role in respect of MHS delivery, ensuring greater consistency of approach.
Alongside these is a division providing analytical support and advice across the whole of the Agency, as well as the Chief Scientist Team, which supports the Chief Scientist role for the whole of the Agency.
Last, but not least, is the Incident Response Team, which reports directly to the Director of Food Safety and recognises the strategic importance of responding effectively to food safety incidents.
The Agency will be writing to external stakeholders and delivery partners to explain the changes.
Source: Food Standards Agency (FSA), UK.
