Fiona Lickorish, Head of the UK- based Cranfield Institute for Resilient Futures, on what the future might hold for food safety.
Considering Fiona Lickerish used to run a wildlife trust, it is no surprise that her interests lie in sustainable planning for the future. Her background in impact assessment saw her move to the UK department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), when they set up a rural policy function. She ran the Horizons programme there until she moved to Cranfield University five years ago.
“I have always been focused on impact assessment throughout my career,” she explains, “identifying and understanding the potential emerging issues and opportunities as early as possible. Most of my work involves what we call Futures Research: investigating what the future might look like. This could be anything from the risk of potential disease from a particular crop to looking at new and emerging indicators of food crime, i.e. what are the things that drive people to nefarious activities here? A lot of my work concentrates on the resilience and vulnerabilities of food chains.”
Fiona works right across the food safety sector with retailers, manufacturers, Agri- food consultants and government bodies. “We also think about new and innovative ways of producing foods, covering all areas, not just beyond the farm gate but prior to that as well. We tend to call it strategic foresight – trying to give an organisation an idea of what they might face in the future, and how they can be strategic about it. If it is a risk, is it in their control and can they manage it themselves? If it is an opportunity, how can they capitalise on this? Sometimes, if you don’t take an opportunity it can become a risk.”
Fiona does stress however that you need to manage the spend when it comes to Futures Research, and not invest too quickly when the apparent risks or opportunities have yet to unveil themselves.
“It is about monitoring the situation and when it hits a certain point you need to be prepared and know what action you are going to take.”
Fiona also refers to the importance of Horizon Scanning in the detection of emerging food safety risks. “What we are trying to do here is to consider those things that are on the periphery of becoming a reality. We need to identify these things as early as possible so that we can do the thinking and make a plan of action.
Lots of people are so busy dealing with today that they don’t have the time to lift their head and see what is coming down the road. We want to provide people with a comfortable space to talk about new and emerging things that may affect their business and to make decisions now. Many people already know what these things are: they are the things that keep you up at night. Giving people the space and time to have a conversation about these things in a way that is standardised, means that you can address it now rather than when you are forced to. It can save you a lot of time and resources. With Foot and Mouth disease, for example, it would have been cheaper and a lot easier to deal with when it wasn’t staring us in the face.”
So, is this something that can be achieved by most companies, big and small? “Most companies are already doing horizon scanning but they just don’t call it that. They often know the issues to be addressed but there is no space to do this. I always ask people to talk about those things that make them feel uncomfortable, those things that they may not necessarily discuss with their boss. Having the con dence to challenge things that have always been done a certain way and having an organisation that is open to accepting those types of conversations is important. The organisations that do well are those that are open to staff at all levels being able to challenge the status quo.”
Pointing to examples of food safety issues and Futures Research, Fiona says: “We are looking for things before they become a trend, sometimes in another sector which could be transferable to food. For example, we found one of the rst issues around the recession in 2008 was that people were pressed money- wise, however they did not want it to affect their lifestyle. This led to a big surge in rural crime in the UK, where animals were being stolen and subsequently there was a rise in black market meat. If you got a good joint of meat in a pub for a very good price, if it appears to be too good to be true, then it usually is.
“This was a big food safety issue. Another example is the adulteration of milk with melanine – this was an issue regarding technology, because they were testing the protein levels but not checking what type of protein it was. So we need to look at what drives people to do these things. It is mainly about economics, so you have to be aware of the environment we are working in beyond our particular sector. We look at political, legislative, social drivers and if we know there is a particular country we source food from, do any of these drivers point to the fact that it is likely to adulterated? It allows you to be one step ahead of the issue.”
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