October 2007

Last week I was touring various parts of the UK– on Tuesday I was at our office in Aberdeen, talking to scientists about Continuing Professional Development.  On Thursday I was at Leeds Castle in Kent with the Agency’s Chair and Deputy Chair and the Chairs of our independent Scientific Advisory Committees (SACs) for our annual event. It is a chance for the Chairs to share experiences of providing scientific advice to the Agency, carry out horizon scanning activities as well as sharing best practices.

I'm back in the office for a day after a busy week in Aberdeen and meeting scientific advisory committee colleagues, but I wanted to blog about obesity before the weekend as it's been very much in the news over the past week.

There was plenty of horizon-scanning science in last week’s Foresight discussion document into obesity, with references to nanotechnology, genomics and robotics, and their potential effect on people’s health.

I’m blogging from Belfast, where I attended yesterday’s open Board meeting and presented my first annual report as Chief Scientist, and the Research and Survey Programmes Annual Report.

The Chief Scientist’s report outlines how we use science in the Agency and includes some interesting historical data in the Changing Times, Changing Risks section, including developments in food technology since 1800.

About half the food on sale in the UK comes from abroad, and a new Agency booklet for local authorities on imported food regulation shows the importance of using sampling and scientific analysis to assess business compliance with food standards, protect public health and provide consumer choice.

Local and port health authority food law enforcement officers sample imported food at point-of-entry (sea ports and airports) and, because imported food can appear in almost any type of UK food premises, inland. This type of surveillance and control activity is used to detect naturally occurring toxins, contaminants, use of unsuitable ingredients, excessive addition of additives, and failure to declare the presence of ingredients to which a consumer may be allergic. This sampling activity helps protect public health, such as when detecting illegal carcinogenic dyes in spices and palm oils.

I'm heading off to Belfast shortly for the Agency's open Board meeting, where I'll be presenting my Annual Report as Chief Scientist, but before I do so, I wanted to comment on last week's 'There goes the science bit…' report, exposing the misleading claims made on various products, including some foods.

Calling themselves 'early career researchers', these young scientists have published transcripts of their conversations with manufacturers and customer helplines, where the evidence to back up claims just wasn't available or came from unreliable sources.

We all fear major disasters but know that sooner or later the unexpected will happen and we need to be prepared. I hope you’ll be reassured to know that the Agency, along with other Government departments and emergency services, regularly take part in exercises to test out our procedures in the event of an incident.

Yesterday the Agency took part in one such exercise – although, being confined to my sick bed in real life, my role was less proactive than might have been expected in the virtual circumstances – a radioactive leak, the effects of which needed modelling. Still, I received reports from and had discussions with my colleagues at the Agency as events literally played themselves out.

It’s important that the Agency’s initiatives are not only based on sound science and evidence, but also that we take the time to stop and evaluate what we have done and just how successful it has been before moving on. 

In 2001, the Agency set itself a target to reduce UK foodborne disease by 20% by 2006.  We researched the most robust way to measure how well we were meeting the target (the annual number of laboratory-reported cases of the five key bacterial pathogens) and, through consultation with stakeholders, we developed and published a farm-to-fork strategy to achieve this target.