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I recognise the work that Emma Harper has been doing on food safety. As I have outlined, I have regular meetings with the chief executive of Food Standards Scotland. It was set up to have the mechanisms to ensure that it remains the competent authority for food and feed in Scotland and that it has official controls. It is important to recognise that it does internal audits on its science and that external audits are carried out by independent scientists.

Emma Harper made a point about the ability to horizon scan and see what is new and what is coming on to the market, which will be a key aspect of the changes that are being proposed. Currently, just under a quarter of Food Standards Scotland’s time is spent on ensuring that we match the 10-year standards, whereas the proposed changes will mean that important resources can be freed up to ensure that we can look to the future to see what potential new additives could be coming on to the market in Scotland.

Georgie, do you want to add anything to that?

Every year, in common with every other body that is funded by the Scottish Government, FSS sets a budget to allocate its resources to the various areas that it has to cover. Those areas include the food standards regulation regimes that we are here to talk about today, along with providing the public and Government with advice on the food that people consume and improving the extent to which the Scottish public, and people more widely, have diets that are conducive to good health. There is a budget process every year, along with an audit process that looks at Food Standards Scotland’s budget and its outcomes. It is a key organisation within Scotland.

Thank you. I am pleased to join the committee to consider the notification on the UK Food and Feed (Regulated Products) (Amendment, Revocation, Consequential and Transitional Provision) Regulations 2025.

The proposed reforms that would be delivered by the UK statutory instrument have been co-developed under the provisional food and feed safety and hygiene common framework. The instrument proposes two Great-Britain-wide reforms for regulated products. The first is to remove requirements for periodic renewal of authorisations for three regulated products regimes. The second is to allow authorisations to come into effect following a ministerial decision, which would be published in an official register rather than being prescribed by statutory instrument.

We need to modernise the regulated products service. Food Standards Scotland and the Food Standards Agency assess applications for those products and provide advice to the respective ministers who decide whether the products can be sold. The instrument would implement a more proportionate approach to reviewing products that are already authorised for sale by focusing on evidence-based safety concerns as they arise, instead of review being driven by fixed renewal points every 10 years. The majority of products have years of safe use. Removing set renewal periods will allow a more targeted approach to regulation, in which FSS and the FSA use powers to review authorisations as new evidence emerges around the safety of a product that is on the market.

The second of the reforms will allow authorisations to come into force following a ministerial decision. Authorisations would be published in an official public register, rather than being prescribed in a statutory instrument. Such authorisations will reduce the timescales for products to reach the market and will not impose the use of valuable parliamentary time. That approach would align with authorisation processes that are used by other regulators in the UK for similarly regulated products.

FSS and the FSA provide technical and scientific scrutiny through skilled and experienced staff and expert independent scientific advisory committees. They assess individual applications and provide a safety assessment from which risk management advice and recommendations are formed for subsequent ministerial decision. The proposed process squarely aligns with internationally recognised principles and maintains transparency.

Overall, this is an opportunity to deliver reforms that prioritise efficiency in the authorisation of regulated products and focuses resources on new products that require more input when access to the market is being sought for them.

FSS and the FSA have earned the trust of the public through their rigorous approach to risk analysis. In the proposed reforms, food safety will continue to be the priority. The reforms will also result in improvements in efficiency and the maintenance of robust safety standards.

I ask the committee to agree that the Scottish ministers should consent to the reforms in the GB SI. I am happy to take any questions.

I do not believe so. There is strength in the fact that Food Standards Scotland, which was set up under the Food (Scotland) Act 2015 to protect the public from risks to health that may arise in connection with food consumption, is independent of Government and that it has the option and opportunities to take advice from independent scientists, as it regularly does. I believe that that is the best way to protect consumers’ interests regarding food and feed safety.

This area is a returning agenda point in my conversations with Geoff Ogle. As I mentioned, about 22 per cent of the regulated products service’s time is spent on 10-year renewals. That reduces FSS’s capacity to deal with new product authorisation in a reasonable timeline. We are expecting more than 300 products to come back over the next two years. The reforms are going some way to steady the state of things, to ensure that we have the right resource to put into the new horizon-scanning areas.

It is important to recognise that the change allows us to bring regulation of those products in line with that for other food and feed products that we regulate, and that Food Standards Scotland maintains the power to consider any product authorisation that is needed at any time. That has been part of the work that Food Standards Scotland and the FSA have been doing together to direct the right resource to the right areas, to ensure that we have robust population health and safety through food standards.

The process that has been worked on collaboratively by Food Standards Scotland and the Food Standards Agency allows for what you have just set out. Food safety is key. Because so many new products are coming on to the market, we must ensure that we can give consumers, and the businesses that use those standards, the right scientific evidence and data to know that products are safe. I am pleased that the work, which has been going on for a number of years, has been a true collaboration approach between the two food standards agencies in GB. They worked consistently through the different options and took ideas to their boards at the same time. It was a truly collaborative way of working and one that I was really pleased to see.

It is fair to say that all the products that would be affected by the changes that we are talking about were rigorously reviewed for safety through the EU. We have worked with the FSA, but we still horizon scan to ensure that we are matching the EU’s standards as well.

Greig, can you add a wee bit about the work that is being done with the EU?

One key reason for the change is to allow Food Standards Scotland to ensure that it has the capacity to look ahead and do horizon scanning, looking at risk rather than timespans. I have been having conversations for almost the past two years with Geoff Ogle, the chief executive of Food Standards Scotland. We meet fortnightly to understand areas of concern or risk in Scotland’s entire food landscape.

You are absolutely correct. Both Food Standards Scotland and the FSA concluded in their safety assessments that there are no safety concerns when Bovaer is used at the approved dose. As you have said, all feed additives are rigorously tested with safety assessments, which ensures that the products are safe. Businesses must demonstrate that the additive is safe for the animal, consumers, workers and the environment.

The key thing is to recognise that FSS and the FSA are moving towards a risk-based way of looking at food standards and additives. That is consistent with what is happening in other areas. It is important to recognise that, when there is a finite resource, it is necessary to make decisions about where best to put that. If you are set up to check something every 10 years, you might miss a risk assessment that has come through, because you might think, “Well, I don’t have to look at that one till later.”

However, we are now putting in the resource to ensure that FSS captures all risk assessments on different products to ensure that, as new evidence emerges on a specific product that could result in authorisation being modified, suspended or stopped, that process will be maintained. FSS has a very clear and transparent risk framework, which it monitors regularly. It will pick up any risks in relation to products to ensure that they are properly checked and that the evidence, data and science on them are captured.