The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Food Standards Agency (FSA), under the Global Food Security programme are delighted to announce the five successful grants of the ‘Understanding the Challenges of the Food System’ call.

The UK food system is part of an increasingly globalised system, which means it can often be prone to periodic scares and crises. UK consumers will be only too aware of the challenges of the food system which they experience through rising food prices as a result of weather disasters, conflicts and wars and will remember only too well scares of recent years about the provenance of meat products.
The FSA and ESRC previously identified an area of mutual interest around the challenges to the UK agri-food system, food safety, food fraud/crime and consumer trust.

Professor Paul Boyle, Chief Executive of the ESRC, said, "We're delighted to come together with the Food Standards Agency to fund innovative research into important areas which underpin UK food security. The projects that are being funded will deal with priorities such as resilience, safety and security, food price volatility and supply chain management - all of which are recognised as yielding important social science research challenges to be addressed for the mutual benefit of the food industry and consumers alike."

The Food Standards Agency's Chief Scientific Advisor, Professor Guy Poppy commented "Achieving food security is one of the greatest challenges facing humanity in the 21st Century. I am particularly pleased that together with the ESRC, we are funding world class social scientists to develop an evidence base in these important but under-researched areas. The Agency believes this research will offer maximum policy relevance, as well as building strong relationships between researchers. The inception workshop will allow the researchers to discuss common themes relating to fraud, resilient food chains, consumer behaviour and an ageing population and thus allow the five projects to share knowledge and expertise throughout their projects and for the greater good of our understanding of the food system."
The successful applications receiving funding are:

Making provisions: anticipating food emergencies and assembling the food system (ES/M003159/1)
Dr Andrew Donaldson, Newcastle University
From animal disease outbreaks, to accidental contamination, food-borne illnesses, and concerns over the provenance or ingredients of foodstuffs, food crises of one form or another are seemingly a regular occurrence. This project will look at the ways in which those involved in the production, processing, retail, management and governance of food anticipate future problems and develop plans to avoid them or deal with them. By investigating these issues the project hopes to be able to draw out realistic lessons for building a more resilient food system.
Food fraud: a supply network integrated systems analysis (ES/M003183/1)
Mr Jon Spencer, Manchester University
The aim of this research is to develop a predictive computational approach to modelling food supply chains so that the points where food fraud can occur are identified. Identifying these points of vulnerability to adulteration within the supply chain will allow regulators and retailers to take appropriate action to avoid food fraud. This project will bring together an interdisciplinary team of researchers from analytical sciences, predictive modelling, law, criminology and business studies, and will contribute to consumer confidence and trust in UK food supply chains.

Older people's perceptions and experiences of strengths and vulnerabilities across the UK food system (ES/M00306X/1)
Dr Wendy Wills, University of Hertfordshire
Like the rest of the developing world the UK is experiencing demographic change. Increasingly people are living longer and predictions say this is set to continue. A significant minority of older people have ongoing health conditions and for those aged over 85 up to two thirds have a disability or limiting long term illness. These older people might become vulnerable through the food that they eat and this should be a research priority in terms of impact on the UK food system, quality of life for individuals, better public health outcomes, reducing the burden of disease and disability, not to mention the resultant economic benefits for the UK.

Public perceptions of the UK food system: public understanding and engagement, and the impact of crises and scares (ES/M003329/1)
Ms Caireen Roberts, NatCen Social Research
The growing complexity of international food supply chains is giving rise to a new generation of risks and concerns. These encompass traditional food safety issues relating to biological and chemical contamination but last year adulteration and fraud of food re-emerged as a major issue with the horsemeat scandal. The extensive media coverage revealed not only widespread fraud but also the hitherto underappreciated complexity of the UK meat supply chain and the extent of meat imports. This project will use both qualitative and quantitative methods along with social media analysis to generate new empirical findings on public perceptions of UK food supply chains, what people's concerns are, and what influences these and how they may be best managed in the future.

Analyses of food supply chains for risks and resilience to food fraud/crime (ES/M003094/1)
Professor Christopher Elliott, Queens University Belfast
As food supply chains have become increasingly global and complex, new and challenging risks have emerged. One of the risks gaining attention from industry, governments, regulatory bodies and consumer organisations is food fraud conducted for economic gain.

In addition, current food protection systems are not designed to look for the never-ending number of potential adulterants that may show up in the food supply. As criminal activity by design is intended to elude detection, new tools and new approaches to supply chain management are called for. This project will combine theories and methods from psychology, political economy, sociology, anthropology, criminology and law, with natural science disciplines to help determine how fraud can happen and what measures could be put in place to prevent it from happening in the future.

The project will also explore how other countries deal with issues of food safety and analyse legal cases as they relate to fraud. Based on an assumption that fraudsters will exploit any intelligence gathering system it will also examine current and potential models of data collection and intelligence sharing and test their vulnerabilities to future fraudulent attacks. This will help to develop a novel data collection sharing system that is more robust and secure.