The Environment Agency is, in England and Wales, the government agency responsible for protection of the environment — regulating pollution, managing flood risk, and overseeing waste. Its food-industry footprint is substantial: it licenses the discharges of food factories, regulates agricultural pollution from farms, oversees the spreading of wastes to land, and polices the waste carriers who remove food waste. Water abstraction licensing affects irrigators and bottlers; flood defence protects low-lying farmland and food plants. The Agency works alongside the Food Standards Agency — one guards the environment the food comes from, the other the safety of the food itself — and with local authorities on local pollution. For food businesses it is the regulator of what goes out of the factory — effluent, emissions, waste — as much as what comes in.