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The scientific basis of MAFF′s policy on the chemical safety of food is described. Examples are provided of the independent advisory committee structure which depends on scientific information and advice in formulating proposals to Government. This science takes the form of pre‐market evaluations of chemical products such as food additives, pesticides and veterinary products and subsequently extends to the monitoring of their presence in the diet as part of a wide‐ranging surveillance programme of the UK′s food supply for food additives, nutrients and contaminants.

During the 1914–18 war the United Kingdom suffered from shortages of food and with the object of preserving as much home produced food as possible, the Ministry of Agriculture set up, as an out station of Bristol University, a Research Station at Chipping Campden in Gloucestershire. The work at that time was primarily devoted to encouraging home preservation by bottling and drying and the Campden Tablet, still in demand by housewives today, is a memento of those days.

The pattern of prosecutions forfood offences has changed very little in the past decade. Compositional offences have rarely exceeded 5 per cent and, since the 1967 batch of regulations for meat products, are mostly in respect of deficient meat content. Food hygiene offences have also remained steady, with no improvement to show for all the effort to change the monotony of repulsive detail. The two major causes of all legal proceedings, constituting about 90 per cent of all cases—the presence of foreign matter and sale of mouldy food—continue unchanged; and at about the same levels, viz. an average of 55 per cent of the total for foreign matter and 35 per cent for mouldy food. What is highly significant about this changed concept of food and drugs administration is that almost all prosecutions now arise from consumer complaint. The number for adulteration as revealed by official sampling and analysis and from direct inspectorial action is small in relation to the whole. A few mouldy food offences are included in prosecutions for infringements of the food hygiene regulations, but for most of the years for which statistics have been gathered by the BFJ and published annually, all prosecutions for the presence of foreign matter have come from consumer complaint. The extent to which food law administration is dependent upon this source is shown by the fact that 97 per cent of all prosecutions in 1971 for foreign bodies and mouldy food—579 and 340 respectively—resulted from complaints; and in 1972, 98 per cent of prosecutions resulted from the same source in respect of 597 for foreign matter and 341 for mouldy food. Dirty milk bottle cases in both years all arose from consumer complaint; 41 and 37 respectively.

Throughout the world, consumption of the staple cereal has decreased as the standard of living has risen. This is illustrated for the long‐term in Britain from a study of rough estimates for wheat flour and potatoes and firmer data for sugar going back to the eighteenth century. If supplies of foods are converted into their energy or calorie value, the contribution of each group of foods to the total can be calculated. Such a calculation for, Britain for 1880 and some intervening years until 1974 makes very clear that grain products were less than half as important in 1974 as they were in 1880 as a source of energy for the British people. Similar trends can be shown for the USA and other industrialised countries.

My way of eating is the result of experience in my childhood home, my training as a dietitian and work in the wartime Ministry of Food. Recent advice from NACNE about modification of diet in an age of affluence reinforces my personal practice.

IN RECENT issues (April, Stopwatch and Book Reviews, June) we referred to the possibility of a factory where the sole human was a person pressing buttons at a control centre. All else was done by automation.

The emergence of large urban communities associated with modern industrialised societies has imposed enormous demands on supplies of essential foodstuffs. It is clearly quite impractical to provide major conurbations with wholly fresh food. Household expenditure on foods in this country exceeds £10,000 million per annum, and we are obliged to import more than half of our essential food supplies. Even minor changes in our climate, geographically or politically, can precipitate crises as far as supplies of fresh foods are concerned, and apart from the necessity to import food, arrangements must now exist for its long distance transportation and prolonged storage with minimum loss of nutritional value. There has also been an increased demand for high quality foods entailing the minimum of preparation and waste at economical prices.