Science and surveillance

Our surveillance work allows the FSA to anticipate risks and opportunities within the food industry, which allows us to respond in a timely manner, supporting the FSA’s goal to ensure food is safe and is what it says it is. We set out to develop a systematic approach across the FSA to effectively identify food and feed risks, and to identify direct impacts including microbiological risk, changes in consumer attitudes and behaviours to food and technical advancements in food production. 

We continued to work towards the delivery of an integrated surveillance sampling system and a more effective and sustainable national capability model. This includes:

• the development of a programme of work to develop our foresight and horizon scanning capability
• improve our data management to support the above
• our future approach to sampling
• addressing our vision for the future for UK official food and feed laboratories
• enhance our delivery of science, evidence and research programmes
• build our capability in analysis and insight.

This allows data from a multitude of diverse sources (from physical sampling to horizon scanning) to be collated and reviewed, so effective and co-ordinated actions can be taken, in a timely manner. This helps the organisation to be strategic, rather than reactive, regarding emerging threats and opportunities. This includes having sufficient laboratory capacity to deal with a major foodborne incident or other surge in demand.

Back to the Main report: Activities and Performances 2021/22.