Choosing

Risk & Consumer Science

• Rural Food Choice
• Quantitative Microbial Risk Assessment
• EU SafeFoods project

Rural Food Choice

VOICE project web-site: www.ifr.ac.uk/voice/

Rural food policy is a hot topic. In particular there is currently much debate surrounding smaller stores versus supermarkets.

The All-Party Parliamentary Small Shops Group published a report earlier this year stating that “many small shops across the UK will have ceased trading by 2015”. This report came ahead of the recent decision by the Office of Fair Trading to refer the grocery market to the Competition Commission.

Try the following websites to give you a head start in the discussions:

Organisations involved in rural food aspects

• The Countryside Agency
• Campaign to Protect Rural England
• Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
• National Rural Knowledge Exchange Commission for Rural Communities
• e.g. Hidden Voices film via the Rural Disadvantage: Priorities for Action page
• Ruralnet UK

Local rural information

• East of England Development Agency
• Government Office for the East of England
• Neighbourhood Statistics
• Norfolk County Council
• Norfolk Rural Community Council
• UK Villages Online

For retailer information, training and advice:

• The British Retail Consortium
• Business Link
• IRN Talking Shop
• The Retail Academy
• The Rural Shops Alliance
• Skillsmart Retail
• Solutions for Business
• Association of Convenience Stores
• Village Retail Services Association/ Plunkett Foundation

Local suppliers/ Smaller store suppliers:

• Big Barn
• East Anglia Food Link
• Produced in Norfolk
• Small Supplier.com
• Speciality Food Magazine
• Tastes of Anglia

Quantitative Microbial Risk Assessment(QMRA) - assessing the safety of the food chain.

Everyone is a consumer supported by a food chain. In the modern world food chains have extended from locally supplied and consumed products, they now feature complex systems that are quite literally global. Food is sourced from many countries either to be consumed directly, as processed ingredients, or to be processed for the food industry. Multiple stages in distribution, procesing and storage occur between the farm and the consumer.QMRA maps these processes and assesses the stages in terms of the risks to the end consumer.

Hazards occur where harmful organisms are introduced into a foodstuff or are allowed to grow to levels where they threaten the consumers health.

Microbes are all around us in the environment. Physical methods to minimise contamination include washing and the use of barriers i.e. packaging, whereas chemical methods include control of temperature and water content (e.g. refrigeration and salting or drying). Often combinations of these 'hurdles' are used to slow microbial growth in foods.

Food safety monitoring is often dictated by a management scheme called HACCP (Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points). It is a Food Safety technique which depends on identifying Critical Control Points (CCPs) in the production and preparation processes (This is often achievd by QMRA). CCPs are closely monitored to ensure that the produced food is safe for human consumption.

Producing safe food, for consumption, involves a complex combination of understanding, awareness, surveillance and good practice.

• A technique used at IFR to model QMRA is Bayesian Belief Networks
• IFR is involved in a DEFRA commissioned food chain safety project

• More on the subject of HACCP
• British Meat Education service HCCP in McDonalds burger production

RELU-Risk project posters

• Relu-Risk poster - Involving Stakeholders in Food Chain Risk Management: Case Studies
• Relu-Risk poster - Managing Food Chain Risk: How Best To Handle Uncertainty
• Network Representation of Disease Risk from Foods

EU SAFE FOODS project

EU SAFE FOODS website: www.safefoods.nl

Establishing how safe a food chain is one task. Increasing consumer confidence in its safety is quite another.

While the European food chain is generally considered to be one of the safest in the world, consumer confidence in food safety has declined as a result of a number of food safety incidents.

The EU SAFE FOODS project aims to restore consumer confidence in the food chain through the development of a new risk analysis framework for foods. This four year project was launched in April 2004 and involves around 100 natural and social scientists from across Europe and further afield (ie China and South Africa).

Some specific objectives of the SAFE FOODS project include:

• The design of new and effective procedures for analysing risks for foods produced by different agricultural production practices (high input, organic and genetically modified).
• The development of a working procedure for the early identification of emerging chemical or microbial risks in food production chains in an expanding European market.
• An examination of the health impact of human exposure to combinations of food contaminants and natural toxins.
• To understand differences in the perceptions of food risk management of consumers and food professionals.
• To investigate the role of institutions across Europe involved in risk assessment and management.
• To design informative risk communication strategies.

The major outcome of the project will be a new risk analysis approach for food safety management that integrates risk assessment of human health, consumer preferences and values, as well as the impact of socio-economic aspects.