Chief Executive Officer’s Review
The effects of the current global economic downturn have been many and varied, touching individuals and organisations across the country.
In common with other government agencies, Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) has had to adjust to the tough economic times. Prioritisation of projects has assumed a greater importance. The attraction and retention of skilled staff has become increasingly vital. The ability to meet rising stakeholder expectations has continued to be a major goal.
Being asked to do more with less is not an uncommon challenge for us and we have a strong track record of adapting our processes and practices to align with the resources at hand. This will be an ongoing challenge for FSANZ because there will be no let-up in industry’s desire to be innovative and efficient, and in consumers’ expectations for a safe food supply.
There are two aspects to our work: outputs and outcomes. We can measure our outputs in terms of numbers of food standards finalised or food emergencies handled. Outcomes relate to the effect of the outputs on the problems of the day. They can be regarded as measures of ‘quality’ – for example, their impact on public health and safety, or on consumers’ ability to make wise buying decisions.
To achieve quality outcomes, FSANZ cannot afford to take short cuts that compromise the quality of its risk assessments and decision making. This focus on quality, in the face of limited resources, became harder to achieve in the past year but will continue to be the agency’s overriding work principle.
Our commitment to quality outcomes has meant that we must continually examine, in a careful and critical way, the various contributory factors to the quality of our performance. These include scientific excellence (staff and knowledge), comprehensive evidence bases, efficient and effective internal practices and an understanding of the external environment in which we are operating.
By way of an example, we are working closely with the Office of Best Practice Regulation to ensure that we not only put in place minimum effective regulation, but also, through a thorough understanding of the underlying problem that we may be trying to address, to focus our food standards more accurately. We need to find an appropriate balance to regulation that does not impact adversely on the economy or quality of life of citizens.
We continue to participate in the work of the Codex Alimentarius Commission and its committees and maintain bilateral relationships with many important national food regulators around the world to fulfil our international obligations. We also provide a coordinating role for State and Territory jurisdictions in the management of national food emergencies.
This latter role was exercised during the melamine-in-food incident in 2008, where government regulators in Australia and New Zealand, within an international context of activity, successfully prevented a risk to consumer safety and potential loss of consumer confidence in imported foods.
The event not only placed a considerable demand on FSANZ’s resources over a number of months, but also on the resources of our regulatory partners in the jurisdictions and other Australian Government agencies.
Unexpected events of this type can be expected to occur from time to time. They divert staff from scheduled activities and sometimes incur direct financial costs. But, by achieving the outcome of maintaining public confidence in the safety of food, these expenditures represent money well spent.
FSANZ must continue to fulfil all of its statutory obligations, and more, despite the consequences of the global economic downturn.
Citizens and industry can rely on FSANZ to place the protection of public health and safety as its prime objective – everything else is secondary. Our conservative approach to this means that every food or food ingredient approved by FSANZ for sale in Australia and New Zealand will continue to be subjected to appropriate safety evaluations. Where there is doubt, a food will not be approved.
Food businesses have never been as innovative as they are now. Industry should have every confidence in our ability to assess applications to amend the Food Standards Code in a timely, objective and expert manner.
This is how FSANZ has always operated. This is how we intend to conduct ourselves in 2009-10 and beyond.
Agency developments
As implied above, FSANZ’s Board and its senior management team have worked hard to respond to these challenging times in an equitable and proactive way.
We have been able to maintain our scientific expertise in key areas, as well as our capabilities in the social sciences, economic analysis, legal drafting, communication and administrative areas, despite the need to reduce staffing levels to live within our allocated resources. This has been achieved by not renewing a number of temporary positions and critically evaluating permanent positions when vacancies arise with targeted recruitment or internal staff movements to ensure key skills are maintained in critical areas.
The Executive team, announced in last year’s report, has settled into position and is showing positive results from a fresh collegiate approach to work in the agency. Two new projects, overseen directly by Executive members, are the development of a Stakeholder Engagement Strategy for FSANZ and, more recently, with the assistance of two Board members, of a Reputation Management Strategy linked into existing planning tools, such as the Corporate Plan.
These initiatives are a signal that FSANZ is placing an even greater emphasis on seeking the views and opinions of stakeholder groups, including our regulatory partners. Differences in approaches between FSANZ and its partners can dramatically slow down the standards setting process, thereby leading to a less than optimal service to the community. By understanding more fully the positions of jurisdictions, we hope that a whole-of-government consensus can be reached earlier in the process.
One area where it has been necessary to maintain expenditure is our information and communication technology systems. Like most organisations, FSANZ is dependent on its ICT hardware and support to a significant degree.
In early 2009, we rolled out new servers and computers in Canberra and Wellington, and upgraded our key applications software to Microsoft Office 2007. We expect such improvements to the ICT system to bring productivity gains in the preparation of documents and in online literature searching capabilities.
We also continued to carry out our monitoring responsibilities, publishing results for the National Food Handling Survey, the Ongoing Food Label Monitoring Survey in Australia and New Zealand and the Consumer Attitudes Survey. These surveys provide essential feedback on the effectiveness of FSANZ’s regulatory work and are, in part, a measure of the quality of our outcomes.
Regulatory highlights
FSANZ’s achievements in 2008-09 are covered in other sections of this report. These achievements illustrate the successful implementation of new assessment procedures to amend the Australia New Zealand Food Standards Codeflowing from the amended FSANZ Act in 2007.
As usual, the year tended to be dominated by a small number of high-profile projects, requiring extensive consultation with stakeholders and policy guidance from the Ministerial Council.
A case in point is the proposed food standard for nutrition and health claims, which the Ministerial Council sent back to FSANZ in June 2008 for review.The Council subsequently decided to defer a decision on the results of FSANZ’s review until March 2010 to allow the completion of an independent ministerial review of labelling law and policy. In response to the review request, we have proposed substantial changes to the layout of the draft standard and amendments to the approach used for the regulation of general level health claims. Because of the significance of the proposed changes, we released an additional consultation paper in March 2009 to seek comment on our approach to addressing these two issues.
We continued to progress a range of activities to assist in the implementation of mandatory fortification requirements for folic acid and iodine, which come into effect in September – October 2009. While outside the scope of FSANZ’s usual role, we assisted the Implementation Sub Committee (ISC) to develop a Compliance and Enforcement Model for Mandatory Fortification. The purpose of the model is to outline industry’s compliance requirements and to develop an agreed national approach for enforcing mandatory fortification requirements.
During the year, we commissioned the National Drug Research Institute at Curtin University to review the available evidence on the effectiveness of advisory statements on labels of packaged alcohol. This analysis was requested by the Ministerial Council for FSANZ to evaluate this policy option to curb high risk drinking. We provided the Council with the conclusions of the commissioned report in May.
Work on food safety standards for the primary industries continued on a broad front, with projects at various stages of completion for the poultry meat, seed sprout, egg, raw milk and meat sectors. Using the development of a standard for eggs and egg products as a pilot, FSANZ and ISC have been coordinating their activities to ensure that standard development and implementation planning proceed simultaneously.
As mentioned earlier, we devoted significant resources to a food emergency involving the melamine adulteration of infant formula and other dairy products in China in late 2008. This involved conducting a series of risk assessments and coordinating a national testing program for imported products. As a result, eleven products were voluntarily removed from sale by Australian importers or the manufacturer, as a cautionary measure.
These tips of the regulatory iceberg illustrate the scope and depth of FSANZ’s contribution to Australia’s and New Zealand’s food regulatory system.
FSANZ suffers to some extent from the small agency syndrome: limited career opportunities for staff. However, our retention rate is good and our levels of staff satisfaction are high. The volume and quality of work progressed during the year is due in no small part to this commitment by staff, for which I thank every person.
I am also grateful to the Board and its Chair, Philippa Smith, for its continued support and guidance in 2008-09. The tone and culture of an organisation is set at the top – the Board – and Board members have set a high bar for us.
Four members of the Board came to the end of their terms of appointment on 30 June 2009: Mrs Hikihiki Pihema (2 terms), Dr John Craven (2 terms), Mr Peter Milne (2 terms) and Dr Pamela Williams (1 term). All contributed significantly to Board outcomes; all established productive working relationships with staff. I thank them for their valuable contribution to food regulation.
STEVE MCCUTCHEON
Chief Executive Officer
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