A SHORT HISTORY OF NFA / ANZFA / FSANZ

FSANZ CEO, Graham Peachey reflects on key milestones in our organisation’s history.

Early Days

• The National Food Authority formed from the food policy area of the Department of Health and the food standards area of the Federal Bureau of Consumer Affairs from the Attorney-General’s Department as an interim authority 17 June 1991 and consisted of 26 staff.
  
  
•  Official establishment of NFA 19 August 1991.
  
  
• The NFA’s formation represented an important step in microeconomic reform and cooperation between the Commonwealth and the States and Territories with the aim of achieving uniformity in food standards across Australia.
  
  
• New Zealand was an important player from the earliest days as the Australia New Zealand Closer Economic Relations Trade Agreement required Australia to harmonise food standards with New Zealand.
  
  
• The first NFA Minister was The Hon Peter Staples, Minister for Aged, Family and Health Services.
  
  
• Very different set up in the early days with the NFA being run by a full-time Chairman with four part-time members, supported by two SES officers Lesley Onyon and Bill Taylor and a further 35 staff as at 30 June 1992.
  
  
• Moved into Macquarie House or the Boeing Building as it is now known on 13 April 1992 although the official opening was on 6 May 1992. A Melbourne office was also opened in August 1992 to establish better links with the food industry although as a result of financial pressures that was closed after two years.
  
  
• The budget for the first year was $3.47m compared to over $18 million now.
  
  
• The first couple of years were frantic as not only did the NFA have to recruit staff but it had to set itself up, develop the systems and processes needed to operate, as well as undertake a major review of the policy underpinning Australian food standards, and set a timetable for reviewing all the existing standards.
  
  
• And this was on top of receiving 61 new applications in its first 10 months together with taking on 70 old applications from the previous NHMRC food committee system and a total of 46 proposals on hand.   In those first ten months, only 7 applications and proposals went to the Ministerial Council for approval, 32 were withdrawn and 10 rejected.
  
  
• Some of the early issues such as Health Claims, standards for special foods and sports foods are still with us today!   Others such as country of origin labelling have only just been finalised.   Why do we always leave the hard ones till last?
  
  
• The first application A1 was for Canned Abalone meat with sulphur dioxide, sodium metabisulphite and sodium sulphite.   We are now up to A587 - Maximum Residue Limits Oxytetracycline (Antibiotic):
  
  
• The first proposal P1 was Date marking of longer life foods.   We are now up to P302 - Minor Amendments Omnibus VI.
  
  
• That’s an average of 59 applications and proposals per year over 15 years!

The Middle Years

• At the end of the first two years, NFA had fulfilled it legislative goals of clearing the backlog in applications and undertaking a major review of the policy underpinning Australian food standards.
  
  
• The authority began to increasingly participate in the many Codex committees as well as the APEC support program which involved providing assistance and advice to countries in the Asia Pacific region on all aspects of food regulation.   Countries assisted included Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, China, Papua New Guinea, Vietnam and Thailand.   This reflected the high standing of the authority internationally.
  
  
• A comprehensive review of the Food Standards Code got underway in 1994-95.   This was a major task and dominated much of the work of the authority till 2000.   The review brought about major changes to the Food Standards Code turning it from a code focussing on individual foods to cover all foods or a range of foods.   The old code consisted of some 600 pages and 90 separate standards.   This opened up opportunities for industry to be innovative whilst at the same time ensuring that food safety was improved and providing consumers with increased information about the food they were buying through improved labelling.   For example under the old code white chocolate could not be called chocolate.   Unfortunately the attempt to do away with a meat pie standard failed following an outcry from politicians, the media and the Australia Consumers Association.
  
  
• Work also progressed on developing a joint Australia New Zealand Food Standards Code.   A Treaty was signed on 5 December 1995 to establish such a joint code and the formation of the first truly bi-national government agency between Australia and New Zealand.   Following the appropriate legislative changes being passed in 1995 a new agency was officially created on 5 July 1996 which was known as the Australia New Zealand Food Authority or ANZFA.   An office was established in New Zealand in 21 July 1996.   And that office now has 14 staff.
  
  
• Of course at the same time other key aspects of the authorities’ work were being developed such as surveillance, the imported food program and the dietary modelling program DIAMOND.
  
  
• In 1995 the authority first considered the possibility of using the internet to inform stakeholders of the work.   Was that only 11 years ago?
  
  
• Another significant achievement was the development of uniform national food legislation, with the Model Food Act, which provided an opportunity for all jurisdictions to tackle food safety issues in a consistent manner.
  
  
• Initiatives by the new Commonwealth Government in 1996 to reduce the regulatory burden on industry led to the decision to review the Food Regulatory system.   This was known as the Blair review which reported to government in August 1998 with a range of recommendations for changing the way food regulations were set.   Following a lengthy consideration of the Blair Report by a special committee of senior officers appointed by COAG, changes were put in place for the next big step for the authority.

Recent Years

• Following on from the outcomes of the Blair review, on 1 July 2002 significant changes were made to the authority with the establishment of FSANZ.   The changes were more than a new name as it changed the role of the Board increasing the number to 12 (including the CEO) and making them responsible for approving the applications and proposals with the a new Ministerial Council only having a review role.   In addition there was a separation of policy from our regulatory role with the Department of Health and Ageing leading the development of ministerial council policy on significant issues.
  
  
• Another major change was the transfer of responsibility for development of primary production and processing standards from DAFF to FSANZ.   This has been a major challenge and the first standard – the seafood standard – was well received and introduced a whole new range of stakeholders to us.
  
  
• The applications and proposals processing system was reviewed and changed to improve our consultation processes, changed the report format to make them a regulation impact statement, used plain English for the reports and increased the focus on cost benefit analysis.
  
  
• In 2004 following the Bansemer Review FSANZ was restructured to create separate risk assessment and risk management sections.

Heads of the Authority

The first Chairperson of the NFA was also the full-time manager of the authority.   This remained the case until 1998 when a full-time general manager/CEO was appointed and the Chairperson became a part-time position.

Chairpersons were:

• Gay Pincus                                      August 1991 to March 1995
  
• Terry Slater                                      (Acting chairperson) March 1995 to January 1996
  
• Winsome McCaughey                    January 1996 to April 1998
  
• The Hon Michael MacKellar           May 1998 to June 2002
  
• The Hon Rob Knowles                   July 2003 to present

Staffing

• At the end of its first 10 months NFA had a total of 37 staff – 27 females and 10 males.
  
  
• Numbers have grown over the years to reflect the increasing workload and new responsibilities that have been added.
  
  
• Over the 15 years approximately 700 staff – both permanent and temporary – have worked to bring about the outstanding achievements the authority has made.
  
  
• At present there are 142 staff.