Food Regulation Policy Framework

In Step A, the authorising environment requires clear scope, objectives and permission. It includes risk analysis – the use of risk tools to assess the priority and ensure the case for action is made. The outcome of Step A is a project proposal.  

After Step A, there is time investment in:

• policy initiation (steps B and C) – a quarter of effort and time will focus on understanding the issue and developing a case
• policy development and evidence (steps D, E and F) half of time and effort will focus on outcomes, opinions and recommendations/advice
• evaluation and review (steps G and H) – a quarter of effort and time on implementation and evaluating the effectiveness of the policy.

Step B (understand the issue and describe the desired outcome):

• Does the risk affect more than one jurisdiction?
• Analysis and assessment
• Define success and intent

The output of Step B is an issues paper.

Step C is Gateway 1. The options are:

• agreed priority for bi-national response – goes to the next step
• no further action
• jurisdictional response.

In Step D (develop and evaluate options), the options are:

• no action
• not regulatory
• regulatory (consider policy guidelines)
• exploring, designing and testing – consider outcomes.

The full range of regulatory and non-regulatory and government or industry initiated options need to be explored in Step D, including:

• education
• partnering
• communication and information
• voluntary industry standards
• incentive programs
• co-regulatory arrangements
• development of food standards.

The outputs from Step D are a Policy Options paper (with or without a new or revised draft policy guideline) and a consultation report.  

In Step E (policy advice), there is a recommendation and policy advice to ministers.

The output from Step E is a Policy Paper (with or without a new or revised policy guideline).

Step F is Gateway 2 – go or no go.  

In Step G (build and implement), put in place the selected option.  

In Step H (evaluation of effectiveness of policy), results will feed back into the policy strategy to reinforce why the issue required development. The output from Step H is an evaluation report.

This process (steps B to H) is flexible and non-linear. Project leads determine which steps are necessary for each project, and work may be discontinued, deferred, referred, or merged with another process at any stage (subject to Food Regulation Standing Committee approval) as further evidence and stakeholder information become available.

Concepts that occur throughout this process are:

Communicate and engage:

• engage stakeholders
• listen to feedback
• consider partnering
• communicate on status
• consider implementation early.

Data, information and evidence:

• environment and evidence scan
• stakeholders may be able to provide commercial in-confidence data (to be kept confidential by the project team) and non-commercial-in-confidence data (made available for transparency)
• explore trusted partnerships
• data may be commissioned to support policy development.