Make every week Food Safety Week
Before Food Safety Week draws to a close I wanted to take the opportunity to get in one final reminder that it’s good to save money and avoid unnecessary food waste but not to economise with food...
View ArticleGastronomic perfection or hepatitis?
How do we get away from celebrity chefs and ‘foodies’ extolling the virtues of unsafe food hygiene practices? Yesterday’s Metro had a whole page dedicated to pork, with the frustrating advice from...
View ArticlePolicy on trial
How do we know whether a government policy really works? There’s a lot of expertise across government in evaluating policy or policy ideas. Recently, however, the Cabinet Office has been looking at...
View ArticleIs opening up data a Pandora’s box?
The Agency’s commitment to openness is one of our key values, so I was eager to read The Royal Society’s new report, Science as an open enterprise. The report highlights the need to grapple with the...
View ArticleBurgers: rare or well done?
Following my previous post about the dangers of eating raw pork, people have been asking whether it’s safe to eat burgers rare, or cooked with a ‘pink blush’ in the middle.The advice being given in...
View ArticleHigher, faster – and into the unknown
If you feel that this blog has been notable by its absence over the past few weeks, you would be correct. Like millions of other citizens I’ve been devoting my spare time to the study of aero-dynamics,...
View ArticleJK Rowling has competition: my annual report’s been published
JK Rowling may have just published another bestseller, but it’s a bit short on science content. If you’re interested in science, in particular science at the Food Standards Agency, why not take a look...
View ArticleWe need more Foxes and less foxiness
Many congratulations to Fiona Fox and her dedicated team of scientists at the Science Media Centre (SMC), which held its 10th anniversary at the Science Museum in London last night. Several speakers at...
View ArticleGM milk: are we going to bottle it?
We know that allergies can be a terrible blight on children’s lives, so I was interested to read that two to three percent of infants in developed countries are allergic to the proteins found in cows’...
View ArticleOff-target on lead-shot game
Rose Prince, in the Daily Telegraph, has chewed over FSA advice to frequent consumers of lead-shot game and come up with an un-digestible response. She says that ‘only an idiot would deliberately...
View Article