F&HN Brief – December 2005
F&HN Update
Wishing all our members
"Compliments of the Season!"
Forthcoming Events
The 2006 Calendar of Events for F&HN is now available
on the events
section of the website, where you will also find an Event
Registration Form. Completed forms should be Faxed back
to Lesley Swift
in order to reserve a place for each event you wish
to attend.
Membership News
New Members
Welcome to new Members:-
| DEFRA |
ICI |
Ipsen |
| Uniq plc |
Yakult (UK) |
|
As you are now aware, the fee for membership
of additional Clusters has been replaced by a Meeting Attendance
Fee of £50 (+VAT)/delegate. All members are now eligible
to attend any cluster event. We believe this better reflects
the needs of the members who are increasingly looking to
attend specific meetings rather than all meetings of one
specific Cluster.
Non F&HN Members may attend Cluster Meetings, this cost
will continue to be £250 (+VAT).
Open
Days & BA Festival
-.jpg) IFR
Open Days
We would like to invite all our friends and colleagues to
visit us during our Open Day series, taking place in parallel
with the British Association's Festival of Science at Norwich
Research Park in September 2006.
The Institute plans three Open Days - the first, on Thursday
7 September is primarily for our academic, business and media
stakeholders. On Friday 8 there will be a number of student
workshops, followed on Saturday 9 when our doors will be open
for anyone who wants to visit. The theme for IFR Open Days
is "Choosing, Eating, Living", representing IFR
as a vital link in the food chain. The concept is that all
IFR's research falls into the following categories:
- Choosing
- what influences our food choice, and how industry can
provide us with safe nutritious food we want to eat
- Eating -
the digestion journey - gastrointestinal responses to what
we eat
- Living -
beyond the gut wall - how food components impact on our
long term health
 BA
Festival
The BA Festival is the UK's leading science
communication event, attracting around 400 of the best national
and international talent from all branches of the natural
and social sciences to talk about, debate and present their
research. You may like to put the dates 2-9 September into
your diary, as we are sure there will be much to interest
visitors. The theme is "People, science and society",
the Presidential address from Frances Cairncross will focus
on what social science can do for the sciences in general.
The key message is not that the social sciences
are just like other sciences, but that social sciences is
the glue that helps to bring other sciences together and to
translate them into policy, public awareness, concepts of
risk and behavioural change.
Making
the News
FSA Consultation Launched - Front of Pack
Labelling
The Food Standards Agency launched a consultation on 16 November
setting out proposals on a front of pack food labelling scheme.
The Agency is considering proposing use of a Multiple Traffic
Light (MTL), which will show at a glance whether a food contains
high, medium or low levels of fat, saturated fat, sugar and
salt.
Taking account of the research results, consumers particularly
liked two of the four schemes. These were the Multiple Traffic
Light and the Colour Guideline Daily Amount (CGDA). On balance,
the evidence demonstrated that Multiple Traffic Light performed
best for the majority of consumers at showing the key nutritional
characteristics of a food simply and easily. In the research
the Simple Traffic Light was not liked and felt to be too
basic.
When asked which scheme they preferred the majority of people
chose the CGDA format. However, further qualitative research
confirmed that many people could not apply the information
it contained to the food choices they actually made.
The Agency is therefore considering proposing the Multiple
Traffic Light for the front of pack scheme. However, because
CGDAs were also well liked, the Agency is inviting views on
the options.
The results of the Agency's research are published, and a 12-week
public consultation launched, on 16 November. It is proposed
that the front of pack labelling scheme should appear initially
on foods such as ready meals, pies and pizzas that people eat
regularly and find most difficult to assess nutritionally. More
details
Science + Innovation
This new quarterly publication from IFR provides an overview
of our leading science stories, knowledge transfer and
innovation activities and replaces IFR News.
Science + Innovation latest issue available online soon,
previous issue online
at: http://www.ifr.ac.uk/publications/.
To receive regular print or electronic copy, contact Dawn
Barrett
Next issue February 2006
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