Minister for Health Jennifer Carroll MacNeill has appointed new members to the Food Safety Consultative Council (FSCC) of the Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI), a change that matters to association and institute professionals as regulators use advisory councils to bring trade bodies, health charities and academics into food safety policy.

The FSAI is the statutory regulator for food safety in Ireland. Its FSCC debates food safety issues and advises the authority, meeting regularly to examine the food chain from farm to fork and to review food safety initiatives.

The new members are Nick Andrews, head of food safety and quality at Dawn Farm Foods, and Alice Doyle, deputy president of the IFA. Pat Farrell, head of operations at Keelings and chair of the Irish Soft Fruit Growers Association, also joins the council.

They are joined by Professor Alan Kelly of University College Cork, Claire Kilty, head of research at the Irish Cancer Society, and Janis Morrissey, deputy chief executive of the Irish Heart Foundation. Phil Smith, operations manager at SPADE Shared Kitchen, completes the group.

The appointments reflect how a regulator draws on organised stakeholders to keep its advice grounded in the sector it oversees.

Irish food, drink and horticulture exports reached a record 19 billion euro in 2025, up 12 per cent, according to RTE. A sector of that scale depends on trusted food safety standards, which gives the advisory council a direct commercial stake.

For the sector, placing a farm organisation, a manufacturer, a horticulture producer and two health charities on one council means competing interests are tested in the same room before advice reaches the regulator. For the sector’s trade bodies specifically, a council seat is an influence channel that depends on individual appointees representing a wider membership.

Seats of this kind work only if appointees carry their organisation’s concerns into the room and report back to members.

Whether the new members use their seats to shape guidance on areas such as nutrition claims and small producer support, rather than attending as observers, will indicate how far advisory councils give membership bodies real influence across the sector.

Source: Agriland / RTE