Health Committee on Feb. 19th, 2007

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

I'd like to call the meeting to order. This is a special meeting, with a videoconference from the United Kingdom.

We want to especially welcome our guests to the committee from the United Kingdom. They are from the Food Standards Agency of the United Kingdom. We have Madam Deirdre Hutton, who is chair of the United Kingdom Headquarters; Gill Fine is director of consumer choice and dietary health; and Rosemary Hignett is head of the nutrition division.

Thank you very much for being with us today. Just for the committee's sake, these are the people who have actually set up the traffic light standards in the United Kingdom. We're very interested in that. We're doing a study on childhood obesity, and we are certainly interested in what your experience has been in the United Kingdom. We thank you very much for taking the time to be with us and sharing with our committee as we get into the last stages of issuing a report for the people of Canada on this issue.

I invite you to make your presentation. Then we'll open it up to questioning from the committee members.

The floor is yours, Madam Hutton. We're very interested in what you have to relay to our committee.

[Deirdre Hutton, Chair, UK Headquarters, Food Standards Agency UK]

Thank you.

Could I perhaps start by asking how long the session will be? It would be helpful to us in framing the presentation.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

We have an hour and a half. We can take the full hour and a half, or any part up to the hour and a half. Just for the committee's information, we have another presenter at 11:30 by videoconference as well.

[Deirdre Hutton]

Thank you very much.

It's a great pleasure to do this. I enjoyed a very good visit to Health Canada and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency towards the end of last year. I don't know if Steven Fletcher is there on your committee, but I hope you'll say hi to him for me if he is.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

He's actually sitting to my right and will be asking questions a little later.

[Deirdre Hutton]

Good. I'm sure he will.

We were very aware at that visit of the interest of the Canadians in our nutritional labelling system. I'm delighted you're pursuing that.

I thought it might be helpful if I gave you a little bit of background about the Food Standards Agency itself. Then my colleagues Gill and Rosemary will talk about the details of the food labelling system.

Is that okay with you?

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

That sounds fine. Please continue.

[Deirdre Hutton]

Thank you.

The Food Standards Agency was set up in 2000 by an act of Parliament following a number of food crises in the U.K., notably BSE and foot-and-mouth disease. The consequence of those food crises was largely that the public lost any confidence in the way in which their food was being regulated. On the whole, they believed it was regulated for the interests of business rather than the interests of the public.

So we were set up very much as a fresh start following those problems, with a very clear piece of legislation that has one objective, which is to protect public health and the other interests of consumers in relation to food. Our remit covers food safety, nutrition, and the choice of food.

When the agency was set up, it was very determined to operate completely differently from the way in which any other regulator had operated, in order to be very clear to the public that we were genuinely putting them first. From the beginning, the agency has operated in a completely open and transparent way. So, for example, all our board meetings are held in public, both with members of the public attending and the meetings being web-streamed. The commitment of the agency is that every single policy decision will be discussed in public so that people can see the way in which we're making the decision and what we're taking into account.

That openness and transparency are also very useful in underpinning our independence, which is the second key attribute of the agency. We are independent from government, and we illustrate that independence through the open and transparent way in which we work.

Also the structure of the agency underpins that independence. Instead of having a minister running the agency, we have a chair and a board, all of whom are appointed after public advertisement, interviews—that whole normal process of application.

Under the act, we have the freedom to publish the advice and the information we give ministers. The whole premise is that we are an independent agency that acts transparently.

We're staffed by civil servants. We have offices in London and in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. We have about 700 on staff. We also have an executive agency that looks after meat issues, which has 1,700 on staff.

Perhaps the most significant thing I should say about us is that what we do is absolutely based on science. It is the fundamental building block of the way in which we work. In order to help us with that, we have nine independent scientific advisory committees, with about 150 scientists who advise the agency on the science in any particular area.

Our budget translates into about $260 million Canadian. We are responsible for the assessment, communication, and management of risk, and for the development of policy for the U.K. government as a whole. We give advice to the government and the public, and through the structure of local authorities in the U.K., we also regulate and enforce. We set the framework, and the enforcement is done for us by the local authorities.

We're very big spenders on scientific research, which is commissioned through open competition. We have projects lasting anywhere from quick projects up to three years. We spend about $60 million Canadian on research every year, and we're the biggest commissioners of nutritional research in the U.K.

If you were to ask if it worked, I would say one measure of that might be the trust the public has in us. We measure this with an annual consumer attitudes to food survey. Currently about 80% of consumers are aware of the agency, and 66% say they're confident in the role of the Food Standards Agency in protecting health. That's been a steadily upward line from the time we were founded. That, I think, is a tremendously important marker for the way in which we operate. It does look as though that independence and transparency and openness are generally underpinning public trust.

I think I'm going to hand over to Gill at this point. I could tell you about food safety, but I know you're not interested in that, and what you really want to get on to is diet and health. If there's anything about the foundation of the agency that you want to ask now, please do so.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

I think we'll just proceed with the other two and have their testimony before the committee, and then we will open it up to questioning, and we'll question all of you together.

[Deirdre Hutton]

Good.

Gill.

[Gill Fine, Director, Consumer Choice and Dietary Health, Food Standards Agency UK]

Thank you.

As Deirdre said, one of our roles is to help improve diet and health in the U.K. Our aim is therefore to make it easier for consumers to choose a healthier diet to help to reduce diet-related disease, including obesity.

I want to highlight that we are really working in three key areas: first, to raise awareness in people, consumers. For example, we have worked on improving labelling and on increasing awareness of a particular issue, such as too much salt being bad for your heart. We also work very closely in terms of products, by influencing others to change their products, or by encouraging reformulation to benefit consumers through, for instance, salt or saturated fat reduction. Finally, we do a lot of work to influence the environment in which people are living and working. That involves working within schools, working with the legislation area, and helping to remove barriers to healthier choices.

I really want to flag up that we put great emphasis on working in partnership to get buy-in on what we want to achieve, but also to help those dreams and actions actually become reality. The front-of-pack labelling approach is one part of that particular jigsaw. That's the area we will be talking about later, which Rosemary can cover off now.

[Rosemary Hignett, Head, Nutrition Division, Food Standards Agency UK]

We started work on front-of-pack nutrition labelling following the report of a select committee of the House of Commons here that looked at obesity. It reported in May 2004, recommending that there should be simplified information on the front of the pack, having heard lots of evidence that people found the current arrangements at that time, the back-of-pack information, too complicated and unhelpful.

In July 2004 we met with stakeholders to really scope what the options were. We identified about half a dozen different types of approaches that different stakeholders thought might be appropriate. We then embarked on a program of consumer research, again alongside stakeholders, to look at the merits of those different approaches. We carried out some qualitative work looking at preferences that consumers had for these different formats. When we had completed that work, we met with stakeholders again, to share with them the results of that work, to look at what were the most favoured formats, and to discuss how we might look at the performance of those formats, because, clearly, although it's important that a format is liked by consumers, it's arguably even more important that consumers can use that format effectively.

Following quite extensive discussions with stakeholders and some further research on different formats, to make sure we had optimized the formats, we consulted with stakeholders on the methodology for that definitive piece of performance and preference research and then carried out that research during 2005. It was a large piece of work. We spoke to more than 2,500 consumers to make sure we had a quantitative study that allowed us to look at the impact on different population groups. We carried out that work, as I said, during 2005, and then subsequently, toward the end of 2005, we consulted on proposals built on the evidence that came out of the research.

Then in March 2006 the agency's board looked at all that consumer research evidence and all the responses to that public consultation and made the recommendation that we are now taking forward. The recommendation was one that was based on four core principles. What the board recommended was that businesses should voluntarily place on the front of the pack nutrition information following these four core principles, which I'll just go through.

The first was that there should be information on four key nutrients: fat, saturated fat, sugars, and salt. The second was that the front-of-pack information should include the amount of each of those nutrients per portion of the product. The third principle was that for each of those nutrients, a red, amber, or green colour code would be used to indicate whether that level was high, medium, or low. The fourth principle was that criteria agreed to by the Food Standards Agency should be used to determine which colour was used.

The agency recommended that information should be provided on the front of the pack for seven categories of food. Again, this followed consumer research showing that there were specific food categories where consumers felt this information would be most helpful, which are, essentially, rather complex processed foods such as ready meals, sandwiches, pizzas, and so on.

Following that recommendation, which was in March 2006, we are very pleased that more that 30% of the retail market in the U.K. has now adopted front-of-pack labelling following those four core principles, and we also have an increasing number of food manufacturers now adopting that approach.

At this point it probably makes sense for us to stop and take any questions you might have.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Thank you very much for starting us off on this, with what you have done there and explaining it. I'm sure we're going to have some questions from the committee.

We'll start with Ms. Brown. She has 10 minutes, and she can start asking whatever questions she sees fit.

Ms. Brown, the floor is yours.

[Bonnie Brown, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

I don't really have many questions, Mr. Chairman, because the presentation was so clear and laid out the facts one by one, exactly the kind of information we wanted to have. So I will pass to anyone on my team who wishes to ask a question, if they have one.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Sure.

Does anyone have a question?

Ms. Bennett.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

I would love to know how you think it's working or how you evaluate whether it's working, because sometimes we do things that make us feel better, but we're not actually sure whether they're working. I'm a physician, and we used to prescribe lots of things that made us feel better.

So I guess I'm just wondering how you evaluate whether this actually is changing people's shopping behaviour, but also, how do you deal with the politics of the industry and the fights about things that get red lights?

[Deirdre Hutton]

That's really a very good question.

The first thing to say is that this system is only just being rolled out. One supermarket in particular has quite a lot of its products marked with traffic light labels, but other supermarkets and indeed manufacturers are just rolling the process out. So at the moment it's too early to have any really robust information about the consequences.

There is anecdotal information about people changing purchasing behaviour and some change in the sales of high-fat products, for example, which have dropped, whereas healthier products seem to have gone up. But the more important thing, I think, is that you will know—I'm sure you will have heard—that Tesco and the majority of the manufacturers have introduced a different system of front-of-pack labelling, which is not the same as the one the agency wants. Rather than the two sides, as it were, fighting each other, what we have agreed to do is to set up the research that will look, in 18 months' time, on a rolling process, at what form of labelling has changed consumers' behaviour the most, and that's been put out to an independent group headed by the government's chief social scientist.

The purpose of that is precisely as you suggest, to get the real evidence as to what works or what works less well. I think that's going to be quite exciting, because actually, in one sense we've just engaged 55 million U.K. consumers in a huge piece of research around consumer behaviour.

Do you want to add, Gill?

[Gill Fine]

Yes, I would add that another part of the evidence base is that we have had information from many of the retailers and manufacturers that are adopting either approach, actually, that it is encouraging their reformulation. So they're actually taking proactive approaches to ensure that when their products go onto the market in the first place, they have a better nutritional profile, and for those that are already on the market, they're looking to see what they can do to improve them by getting a shift in the colour coding or in the percentage.

So we have some insight that there is a move within parts of the industry to produce a wider range of products, but in terms of knowing whether consumers will actually buy them, that depends on the purchasing till receipts, as well as the work that Deirdre has just mentioned.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

Are you familiar with the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada, which has developed a program called Health Check? Again, it's a voluntary thing. I think some of the grocers, like Sobeys in this country, and some of the producers like the Campbell Soup Company have reformulated their products in order to get a Health Check mark.

Do you see that a partnership with a health charity that has a good reputation—from recipe books to their motivation—would be helpful, or do you think redoing it from a government agency would be preferable?

[Gill Fine]

That's a very interesting approach.

As I mentioned, we put a lot of store on working in partnerships. Rosemary has identified some of the retailers and manufacturers that are actually adopting the core approach that we've spoken about, but we also have a wide range of other groups, including health organizations, British medical associations, some of the royal colleges, that are actually putting their weight behind the approach of the four core principles. We recognize the influence they have in helping to change the discussion and the debate around the importance of front-of-pack labelling, so we think it is a very important way to be working, not just with a single organization, but to get, if you like, a coalition of activity across a very wide range of different groups.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

Are the four principles in a food guide kind of pamphlet? Are the rules readily available for citizens so that people know why something got picked or not picked in terms of its red light, green light label?

Here, the Health Check program is very much based on our food guide. So people can use the food guide as background and then figure out why—whether it's because of sodium or fat—it was approved or not. What would be the background documentation you would have for your traffic light four principles?

[Rosemary Hignett]

The background for consumers for the use of the traffic light labelling is what we call our “eat well” advice. We have eight pieces of “eat well” advice, which includes—

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

I didn't hear that word.

[Rosemary Hignett]

It was “eat well”. We have a whole website called our “eat well” website, which covers a wealth of advice to consumers. It boils down to eight particular pieces of advice, which include cutting down on high-salt foods, cutting down on high-saturated-fat foods, cutting down on high-sugar foods, and looking in those areas—for instance, looking in dairy foods—for low-fat options. The way the traffic light labelling works is that it identifies those high-fat, -salt, -sugar foods and those low-fat, -salt, -sugar foods to be used alongside that “eat well” advice.

The four core principles are aimed at the manufacturers in terms of the information they provide on the front of the pack. So the four core principles are not aimed at consumers.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

I just wanted to know if you had separate rules for baby foods. Is that more of a regulation piece in terms of sugar in baby foods or those kinds of things? Or is this straight across, baby to grown-up, cradle to grave?