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Food Safety Authority of Ireland’s new five year strategy to ensure continued trust in Ireland’s food systems

The Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI) today (Tuesday, 03 December 2024) published its new Strategy for 2025-2029, setting out an ambitious strategic roadmap to safeguard consumer health and assure continued trust in Ireland’s food systems.
At its core is a commitment to protect consumers in Ireland and consumers of Irish food in more than 180 markets across the world. The five-year Strategy seeks to ensure that Ireland’s food safety regulatory system is robustly equipped to respond to the challenges and opportunities presented to food safety, within an evolving global food supply chain with new innovations and changing consumer preferences and tastes. As the central competent authority, the FSAI will continue to lead and support Ireland’s food safety inspectorate to implement a fair, consistent and effective system of enforcement.

The strategic actions include an evaluation of the evidence to inform policy relating to a hygiene-rating scheme for food businesses across Ireland. It identifies the roll-out of targeted supports to assist with compliance by food businesses and making greater use of technology platforms to share communications on food safety and compliance. It will continue to advocate for food safety and authenticity nationally and internationally, as food systems innovate, embrace technology and transition to become more sustainable. The FSAI also commits to increasing collaboration with European and international partners to further enhance its preparedness to manage food safety risks.

The Four Strategic Goals Are:

Advocate and Engage: Advocate for the importance of food safety and authenticity in engagement with all stakeholders to better protect consumers’ health and interests and increase compliance. Actions include a commitment to streamline communications to food businesses using technology platforms and examining the evidence surrounding a hygiene-based rating scheme and its potential role in Ireland’s food control systems.

Reduce Risk: Enhance the ability to protect consumers’ health and interests by anticipating, assessing, and managing risks that impact on the safety and authenticity of food. Key commitments include the adoption of a multi-agency agreement on the management of incidents based on best practice. It also identifies the importance of strengthening capabilities to manage risk, through increased participation with European and international partners.

Enforce Food Law: Ensure and verify compliance with food law and take appropriate action to protect consumers within a national regulatory framework. Priority actions include continued improvement in official food control systems; working on a cross-agency basis, with partners across Europe and globally; leading and supporting the national food safety inspectorate.

Drive Organisational Excellence: Deliver better food safety outcomes for consumers through empowering staff, aligning systems, and demonstrating adaptive, value-driven leadership. Key commitments include maintaining a best-in-class approach to governance and improving efficiencies through maximising the use of digital technologies.

Dr Pamela Byrne, (Chief Executive, FSAI) said that the FSAI’s new Strategy 2025-2029 provides a clear five-year roadmap to guide how it will work to achieve its strategic goals.

She stated, “Our new Strategy reaffirms our commitment to our vision of safe and trustworthy food for everyone. To realise this, we have developed a strategic roadmap, which accounts for the contemporary challenges and opportunities posed for food safety and food safety controls in Ireland and internationally. These have been considered within the context of a rapidly evolving global food system, influenced by a host of factors, including the drive towards more sustainable food systems, the development of new food products and the utilisation of technology.”

“As an organisation, our core objective is to protect consumers’ health and assure continued trust in our food systems, by ensuring that the food consumed in Ireland, and Irish food consumed globally, is safe to eat. This new five-year Strategy will continue to develop a culture of food safety in all food businesses and thereby, improve food safety overall. The Strategy is underpinned by actions, anchored in an evidence and data driven based approach. We will continue to oversee a robust evidence-based regulatory system, which supports the food industry to thrive and develop with food safety at the core of how it operates. We will continue to build our organisational capabilities and deepen engagement and collaboration with our stakeholders, including our European and international partners. Combined, these actions will allow us to continue to protect consumers’ health and interests to the highest of standards,” added Dr Byrne.