Developing current concepts for food integrity

This dissertation reports on forty published works related to food integrity, between 1995 and 2025, forming a record of a technical career, which started with the development of novel methods for the determination of metals in food, broadened out to managing large government projects for composition and labelling, and focussed on food authenticity issues to help the UK government address the 2013 horsemeat in beef products global adulteration issue.

The research presented demonstrates advances in measurement science addressing difficulties in the analysis of food samples for the determination of analytes to verify the safety, authenticity and composition of food. The unifying theme is the use of measurement science to assure food integrity to support the better regulation of food safety and standards protecting legitimate food businesses and ultimately consumers.

The rigour and significance of the work presented is demonstrated by the fact that the publications presented have been cited 420 times, from the time of publication to 15 March 2025, in some cases, by government bodies and other global organisations. The novelty of the published works is evident as 88% include ‘world-firsts’, in the context described herein, advancing knowledge in measurement science to assure food integrity.

Additionally, the significance of work conducted for the Government Chemist was recently recognised, in the International Science Review commissioned by DSIT, as being “internationally competitive (comparable with other world-class laboratories internationally)”.