The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) is celebrating its fifth birthday and, as part of its celebration, hosted a Scientific Forum on 'From Safe Food to Healthy Diets' in Brussels earlier this week. It was a great opportunity to meet many of Europe's top food scientists and regulators.
The main message that I took – and one that I will be making at a meeting tomorrow with the No 10 Strategy Unit’s review of Food Policy tomorrow – is that while the impact of energy-rich, nutrient poor diets on obesity is in many ways the defining issue for all of us working on food and health, we should not lose sight of the continuing challenges on food safety.
Working in partnership with the food industry, we have reduced foodborne illness by about 20% in the UK since 2001, but with increasing globalisation of the food supply; an ageing and increasingly susceptible population; more eating outside the home; new food production technologies and risks of new zoonoses there is no room for complacency.
Far too many people are still getting sick from unsafe food and we need to make sure we don't take our eye off this particular ball when considering what we do about obesity.
Another point I picked up was how difficult it is for EFSA to carry out its function of risk assessment and risk communication when they are separate from the risk managers.
Here in the FSA we have responsibility for all three parts of this process, with risk assessments carried out by independent expert committees being fed into Board discussions in open session to discuss risk management options.
In my opinion, it is the dialogue between risk assessors and risk managers that facilitates shared understanding between these two very different groups of people and leads to action that is proportionate to the risks and, I hope, communication that is meaningful to all.