Where do you get your evidence?

Posted by Andrew Wadge on March 19th 2008 in Science in Government

I often blog about evidence. One of the things that we are planning over the coming months is how to make our evidence more accessible.  We already publish all of our research findings in the Agency Information Centre and summarise them on our website, but we are planning to take this one step further in the autumn.

We are looking for an organisation to establish and host an open access repository on our behalf.  When this repository goes live you will be able to access all of our research final reports from your pc.  Whether your interest is nutrition or nanotechnology, you will be able to see the evidence and judge for yourself.

Making the findings of our research more accessible is important because, as well as being a record of our research used to inform our policies, it will mean that other researchers, wherever they are based, can make use of our findings.  When there is a significant development in a particular area, it is published in a peer reviewed journal, but researchers out there will know that not all of their work makes it into such publications. 

In the meantime, project summaries of all our research – in progress or complete – can be obtained from our website, with full text available, on request, from our Information Centre.

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My sympathy...

Posted by Andrew Wadge on 03/04/2008 - 15:35

Thank you for your response to my blog.

Can I first of all express sympathy to you and your family about the illness they have experienced. I have children of my own and I know how upset I would be if they were put through this.

I hope you will understand that I have no first-hand knowledge of the case you quote in Manchester. I presume you are taking legal advice on it so it is best I do not comment on it directly.

What I can say is that ‘Scores on Doors’ is not meant, on its own, to be a cure-all for all of the food safety and food premises hygiene problems. Each year there are a wide range of environmental health interventions with food businesses, including over 500,000 inspections of premises. ‘Scores on Doors’ is intended as another ‘tool in the bag’ for enforcement, in this case to give consumers more information on hygiene standards and encourage businesses to do more on hygiene standards.

But unfortunately, as the case you quote shows, there will be cases where hygiene standards are not met. Where this happens the consequences can be serious both for individual consumers and for the business involved. I accept that it may be of little consolation to you but the penalties on a business can be considerable when there are breakdowns in hygiene and food safety involving large fines, and where appropriate, even imprisonment.

Once again please accept my sympathy to you and your family. I can assure you we at the Agency, scientists and non-scientists alike, will continue to look at any means of improving food safety safeguards for consumers.

SCORES ON THE DOORS.

Posted by Jeanette Ashton (not verified) on 22/03/2008 - 04:19

It astounds me that you actually believe this system works. Just what planet are you on. It has been stated you don,t have the man power to assess every premises from afresh, there is even mention of these premises being assessed from previous inspections how can you have such a laid back attitude.
UK LAW requires registration of all premises used for a food business.
Regestration allows Local Authorities to keep an up to date list of all premises in their area so they can visit them when they need to,frequency depends on the type of business.
Please explain to me how a top restraunt in manchester was closed down by manchester city magistrates on the 16 Jan and allowed to re-open on 18 Jan under a different name.
The restraunt were fined £3000 for three offences of infestation. They were also made to pay £4100 court cost. What really infuriates me is not a mention of the two individuals who were struck down with the worse form of food poisoning. My daughter and her partner have been put through shere hell, her partner was at deaths door, he suffered kidney failure and was put on dialysis. Doctors couldn,t even give an answer to a question, ( Is my son going to die).Andrew has a very bleek future ahead of him due to the severe damage to his kidney,s and will have to under go a kidney transplant and that goes on the availability of doners.
Will you please tell me how your so called system, SCORES ON THE DOORS helps these two individuals because the way i see it you have all failed them