Food Standards Agency

Food Standards Agency Profile and History

The FSA is also involved in horizon scanning activities in collaboration, to identify possible food safety risks before they emerge. For example, with Defra and others, the Agency is sponsoring a Centre for Environmental Risk and Futures (CERF) at Cranfield University. The centre will provide horizon scanning and futures studies across the food and environment areas to help us identify and address potential new threats and opportunities to delivering safer food in the long-term. Some of the potential issues we are interested in exploring are: how could increases in environmental temperatures affect the growth and distribution of harmful bacteria in the food chain? Could increases in energy prices lead to a decrease in use or inadequate refrigeration? Is there an increased risk of flooding and how might this affect chemical and microbiological contamination? And, more generally, how might the food supply system change over the forthcoming decades, and what will that mean for our work on food safety? What do you think the future priorities for food safety should be? What wider developments might help us, or knock us off course?