The Food Standards Agency has survived the new Government’s bonfire of the quangos – but with much reduced responsibilities.

In future, it will be tasked only with maintaining public confidence in the safety of the food we eat and the anti-obesity drive caused largely by junk food is to be handed to the Department of Health.

Another of its roles, the enforcement of “country of origin” food labelling will be handed to the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).

The FSA was created by New Labour in the year 2000, just before the outbreak of foot and mouth disease which caused chaos over wide areas of Northern England, including the Yorkshire Dales where tens of thousands of cattle and sheep were slaughtered.

Government handling of the case was universally judged to be a debacle, only finally sorted out when the Army was called in, which led to the scrapping of the old Ministry of Agriculture and its replacement by Defra.

The FSA survived, however, but was constantly surrounded by controversy. It was accused of “cosying up” to the major supermarket chains, which sell much of the junk food accused of causing the nation’s obesity epidemic, and failing to secure prosecutions in case like the large-scale outbreak of avian flu at a Norfolk turkey farm.

It was that case that revealed that turkeys sold as English produce had in fact been imported from Hungary but could be labelled ” local” because they were processed here. This was later established to be the case with much of the pork and beef which went into so-called “British” sausages and pies.

With such a record, the quango has been lucky to survive but a statement from Defra said “public confidence in food safety issues will be protected, as the Government confirmed its intention to retain the Food Standards Agency (FSA) with a renewed focus on food safety.”