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Food Focus August 2008

New Zealand Food Safety Authority

August 2008

Editorial

“Being responsible for the safety of our country’s food is something NZFSA takes seriously. Everyone wants safe food and it is expected and quite natural for people to have an interest in what they and their families eat.”

Here at NZFSA we are continually surprised at the colourful and unsubstantiated stories constantly appearing in the media about this or that food being good or bad for us, or some survey showing that something we have eaten for many years is apparently making us sick. It must be confusing for people to read these and even more confusing to find our advice quite often contradicts the new wisdom.

As the government agency regulating food for sale in New Zealand, we must base our views about food safety on science and the overall weight of evidence, not single, non-peer-reviewed surveys and opinion. But sometimes those surveys and opinions are quite compelling and we recognise people struggle to understand why we are not acting on what, on the surface, may seem a dangerous situation. There are many situations where science does indeed struggle to compete with emotion.

The advice and decisions of NZFSA potentially have a major impact on New Zealand’s public health, trade, consumer and business confidence, and the setting of our own and international standards. Therefore they must be soundly based, well-considered and reliable. We must have a good knowledge of hazards in our food and our exposure to them and we must carefully assess the risks the hazards may pose in particular circumstances.

Each time we consider a food or food-related concern or select a food safety control measure, we look at the science and research we generate ourselves and material that has been peer reviewed by agencies in New Zealand and around the world. We use this science base to weigh up the risks in the New Zealand context and determine the appropriate risk management options needed to protect consumers. Where there is inadequate scientific data we are extremely conservative and err on the side of caution.

When we make decisions about the safety of a particular food or food-related product, we know that sometimes these may not align with popular beliefs and the stories around them. We know for example that many people become concerned when we find pesticides or other chemicals in food despite our zero risk approach. Some of this concern may be more about our ‘social memory’ of old practices when particular chemicals were used more indiscriminately both in New Zealand and in other countries. The processes used are certainly now much improved and the tolerance levels for contaminants in food are much lower and usually based on good agricultural practice rather than the actual risk to consumers (which might be orders of magnitude higher).

The science tells us that in New Zealand these levels are hardly ever a food safety concern. The benefits in terms of producing safe and affordable food well outweigh any minimal risk involved with the use of chemical pesticides. So we permit them to be used but require strict control conditions that will ensure good agricultural practice and the protection of consumers. Explaining how that works is not easy though!

NZFSA is committed to an open and transparent approach, which includes explaining how we make decisions and what we base our views on through our publications and website. Having this information should help people understand the reasoning behind our decisions and enable them to draw their own conclusions.

As another way to share this information, I will be writing a regular column on our website where I will outline particular risks NZFSA has assessed and the background considerations that led to our decisions around those risks.

I hope my new column will help people under-stand the science that has underpinned our decision making, why we have reached the conclusions we have, and any risks involved – because when it comes to food safety it is impossible to talk in absolutes.

Andrew McKenzie