Conflicts of interest in UK food regulation ’puts public health at risk’

Conflicts of interest in UK food regulation "puts public health at risk" - new research. Research finds substantial conflicts of interest in the bodies advising the Department for the Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) or the Food Standards Agency (FSA) Recommends that commercial conflicts of interest should no longer be allowed to participate in UK food policymaking - Food regulatory institutions in the UK should have robust mechanisms for addressing commercial conflicts of interest, argues a new research paper. The research, published jointly by Professor Erik Millstone of the Science Policy Research Unit, at the University of Sussex Business School, and Professor Tim Lang of the Centre for Food Policy, City, University of London, has found that not one of the bodies advising the Department for the Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) or the Food Standards Agency (FSA) is free from conflicts of interest. The study reviews declarations of conflicts of interest in the FSA Board and Committee since its creation and make four recommendations on how to reverse this worrying practice. It has found that those conflicts of interest have made UK food governance vulnerable to 'agency capture' - the theory that regulatory agencies may be dominated by the interests they regulate and not by the public interest. Additionally, their research has found that the Advisory Committee on Releases to the Environment, which advises Defra ministers on the safety and acceptability on GM crops, consists of seven members, of whom only one declares no conflicts of interest.