Food Ethics Council

Helen Browning OBE (Chair)
Professor Ruth Chadwick
Dr Charlie Clutterbuck
David Croft
Dr Elizabeth Dowler (Trustee)
Julia Hailes MBE
Jeanette Longfield MBE
Dr Peter Lund
Professor Ben Mepham
Professor Kevin Morgan
Dr Kate Rawles
Professor Christopher Ritson (Trustee)
Professor Doris Schroeder
Geoff Tansey (Trustee)
John Verrall (Treasurer)

Helen Browning OBE (Chair)

Helen Browning, who was awarded an OBE in 1998 for services to organic farming, runs a 1350 acre organic livestock and arable farm in Wiltshire. She supplies customers with organic meat through a nation-wide home delivery service and via multiple retailers. Helen is the Soil Association’s Food and Farming Director and is chairman of the England Animal Health and Welfare Implementation Group. She was a member of the Agriculture and Environment Biotechnology Commission (AEBC) throughout its life (disbanded April 2005) and the Meat and Livestock Commission until its end. She has worked with many food and farming organisations over the last twenty years, and was a member of the Government’s Policy Commission on the Future of Farming and Food (‘the Curry Commission’). Back to top

Professor Ruth Chadwick

Director of CESAGen, the ESRC Centre for Economic and Social Aspects of Genomics. A philosopher and lawyer, she has particular interests in the bioethics of food, reproductive technologies, and genomics. She chairs the Ethics Committee of the Human Genome Organisation and is a member of the Government's Advisory Committee on Novel Foods and Processes, the Panel of Eminent Ethical Experts of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, and of several other advisory committees. Her publications include the award-winning The encyclopedia of applied ethics (editor in-chief, 1998) and Functional foods (2003). Back to top

Dr Charlie Clutterbuck

Charlie Clutterbuck is an agricultural scientist and research fellow at Department of Food Policy, City University. He was a member of Advisory Committee on Pesticides, and his company Environmental Practice at Work produces online guides for suppliers to several major retailers to reduce pesticide use. He has also developed e-learning programmes for companies to demonstrate trading according to the standards of Ethical Trading Inititative. He is a representative of the Transport and General Workers Union (TGWU) farmworkers with the Health & Safety Executive, specialising in developing competence based health & safety qualifications. He runs a web site (www.sustainablefood.com) to provide a resource for educators, students, managers and workers to promote food that is more 'sustainable' - healthier for people & planet. Back to top

David Croft

David Croft is Director of Conformance and Sustainability at Cadbury Schweppes plc., where he is responsible for quality assurance, environmental management, health and safety and ethical trade practices in a global supply chain with around 40,000 suppliers. He joined Cadbury Schweppes as Director of Ethical Sourcing and Sustainability in June 2005, having previously worked for more than ten years at the Co-operative Group. He has contributed significantly through this work to the development of the UK Fairtrade market by launching new products and ranges, and by developing consumer awareness and marketing campaigns. He has been involved in numerous initiatives to improve supply chain standards within companies and across the food sector, and has engaged extensively with government departments and NGOs. Back to top

Dr Elizabeth Dowler (Trustee)

Reader in Food and Social Policy in the Department of Sociology at the University of Warwick. A registered public health nutritionist, she has worked in many parts of the world, as a researcher and consultant, with agricultural, health, social and planning sectors, or for international agencies. She is a member of the National Heart Forum, of Sustain’s Food Poverty Project Working Party, and of the Programme Development Group for Maternal and Child Nutrition Public Health Programme Guidance for the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE). Her recent research includes poverty, food, nutrition and public health; evaluating food/nutrition policy and local initiatives; ‘alternative’ food systems and networks, especially consumers’ perspectives and benefits and exploring ‘reconnection’; and people’s views of policies on BSE/CJD and risk in food. In 2005-6 she was a member of the panel evaluating 10 years of the Scottish Diet Action Plan for NHS Scotland, and is leading a mid-term evaluation of Food and Wellbeing Wales, for Food Standards Agency Wales. Recent publications include: chapters in Dora (ed) 2006, Engaging with public concerns over safe food: lessons from BSE/CJD for health and risk communication strategies, Geneva: WHO; Dowler & Jones Finer (eds) 2003, The welfare of food: rights and responsibilities in a changing world, Oxford: Blackwells; Mosley & Dowler (eds) 2003 Poverty and social exclusion in North and South, Routledge: London, in which she has a chapter co-authored with Geoff Tansey; Dowler & Turner with Dobson 2001 Poverty bites: food, health and poor families, Child Poverty Action Group: London. Back to top

Julia Hailes MBE

Julia Hailes (www.juliahailes.com) is a leading opinion former, consultant and speaker on social, environmental and ethical issues. She has worked with a number of blue chip companies, including British Airways, Procter & Gamble and Marks & Spencer. In 1987 she co-founded SustainAbility Ltd, a think tank and consultancy company, where she was a director until 1994, when she started working freelance from her home in Somerset. Julia is co-author of eight books, including the number one best-selling Green consumer guide, which sold over a million copies worldwide and The new foods guide published in 1999. She is currently working on The new green consumer guide, to be published by Simon & Schuster in May 2007. She regularly writes on food issues and is member of the Guild of Food Writers. Back to top

Jeanette Longfield MBE

Co-ordinator of Sustain: the alliance for better food and farming, a network of around 100 national organisations formed from the National Food Alliance (which she joined in 1992) and the Sustainable Agriculture Food and Environment Alliance. She has also worked as a Policy Analyst at the NCVO, and for the Coronary Prevention Group. Her publications include A guide to preventing heart disease for Which?, and numerous articles in food, health and consumer magazines. She was a member of the Royal Society Inquiry into Infectious Diseases in Livestock commissioned by the Government following the Foot and Mouth Disease outbreak. As Sustain's Co-ordinator, Jeanette liaises with the Food Standards Agency, contributes to a number of food policy committees, and appears regularly in the media representing a public interest view on food policy issues. Back to top

Dr Peter Lund

Senior Lecturer in molecular genetics, cell biology and biotechnology in the School of Biosciences, University of Birmingham, and member of the Government's Advisory Committee on Novel Foods and Processes. As a molecular biologist who worked for a US biotechnology company before returning to academia, he has carried out scientific research at the Universities of Sussex, Harvard, Melbourne and Bristol. He has a long-standing interest in ethical issues arising from scientific research, and teaches this subject to both science and engineering undergraduates. Back to top

Professor Ben Mepham

Director of the Centre for Applied Bioethics at the University of Nottingham. He was a co-founder (and is currently a Board member) of the European Society for Agricultural and Food Ethics (EURSAFE), and was a founder member of the government’s Agriculture and Environment Biotechnology Commission (AEBC). A former research physiologist, he has taught bioethics to science undergraduates for over 20 years. Publications include: editorship of Issues in agricultural bioethics (1995, Nottingham UP); Food ethics (1996, Routledge); and his latest textbook Bioethics: an introduction for the biosciences, which was published by Oxford University Press in 2005. Back to top

Professor Kevin Morgan

Kevin Morgan is Professor of European Regional Development in the School of City and Regional Planning at Cardiff University. His research interests revolve around three main themes: (a) the role of cities and regions in regional development (b) the interplay of political devolution and economic development and (c) sustainable agri-food chains, with special reference to the role of creative public procurement. Currently he is the principal investigator on a project funded by the Economic and Social Research Council called Delivering sustainability: the creative procurement of school meals in Italy and the UK. He is also the co-author of Worlds of food: place, power and provenance in the food chain (Oxford University Press, 2006). Back to top

Dr Kate Rawles

Kate Rawles was a lecturer in the philosophy department at Lancaster University for nine years, specialising in ethics, environmental ethics, sustainable development and animal welfare issues. She has a long-standing interest in figuring out what academia has to say about ethics and values, and how to communicate that to professionals in other fields. In 2000 she left Lancaster University and now works half-time free-lance and half-time as a senior lecturer in Outdoor Studies at St Martin's College, Ambleside. Her free-lance work includes developing and running Outdoor philosophy courses that combine critical thinking about environmental issues with emotional engagement through experience of wild places, in order to inspire a commitment to more sustainable ways of living. In addition, she lectures on ethics and values in sustainable development, conservation and animal welfare, and has published a range of articles in these areas. She is academic director of Forum for the Future's innovative Reconnections course (with Jonathon Porritt), and an independent consultant for Nirex UK on ethical issues in radioactive waste management. Her current main project is the Carbon cycle - a 4,500 mile trip along the Rockies from El Paso to Anchorage, raising awareness of climate change issues (Summer 2006). Back to top

Professor Christopher Ritson (Trustee)

Christopher Ritson is Professor of Agricultural Marketing in the School of Agriculture, Food and Rural Development, University of Newcastle upon Tyne. He was formerly Head of the University’s Department of Agricultural Economics and Food Marketing, and from 1992 – 2002 Dean of the Faculty of Agriculture and Biological Sciences. He is author or co-author of 17 books and monographs, and numerous articles, many concerned with various aspects of the Common Agricultural Policy and more recently consumer attitudes to food quality and safety. At present, he is coordinating the consumer part of the large EU Framework six research project on quality and safety aspects of organic and low-input food. He served for nine years on the MAFF National Food Survey Committee, and followed this with eight years as a member of the Food Advisory Committee. He has been an adviser on food prices to the Department of Prices and Consumer Protection and subsequently to the Department of Trade and a member of a Ministry group studying the scientific basis of food choice. He is now Chairman of the Cereals Industry Forum, Deputy Chairman of the Home Grown Cereals Authority, and a member of the Food Chain Centre Steering Committee and of the Food Standards Agency Advisory Committee on Research and its Economics Advisory Panel. He was Chairman of the Agriculture sub-panel for the 2001 Research Assessment Exercise. Back to top

Professor Doris Schroeder

Doris Schroeder is a Professor of Moral Philosophy and Head at the Centre for Professional Ethics, UCLan Preston. She specialises in the areas of applied ethics (global bioethics and food ethics) and political philosophy (international justice and benefit sharing). She was a member of an expert committee financed by the German Ministry of Science on 'Functional Foods'(2001-2004), and she co-ordinates two large projects for the Wellcome Trust and the European Commission on benefit sharing. Her book publications include Applied ethics (in six volumes, co-edited with Ruth Chadwick) and Functional foods (co-authored 2004). In 2007 and 2008, Doris will divide her time between UCLan and the University of Melbourne in Australia. Back to top

Geoff Tansey (Trustee)

Geoff Tansey is a freelance writer and consultant most recently specialising in food, agriculture and related intellectual property issues affecting trade and biodiversity. He helped found and edit the journal Food Policy in the mid-1970s and has been a consultant to international agencies, governments and non-government organisations. He has worked on agricultural development projects e.g. in Turkey, Albania and Mongolia. Formerly honorary visiting professor of food policy at Leeds Metropolitan University, he is now an honorary research fellow in the Department of Peace Studies at Bradford University and visiting fellow at the centre for Rural Economy at the University of Newcastle Upon Tyne. His books include The food system: a guide, plus co-editorship of The meat business: devouring a hungry planet and Negotiating health – intellectual property and access to medicines. He is currently working on a book provisionally entitled The future control of food – a guide to international negotiations on intellectual property, biodiversity and the future of food security. In June 2005, he received one of six Joseph Rowntree ‘Visionaries for a Just and Peaceful World’ Awards, which provide support for five years. Back to top

John Verrall (Treasurer)

Having qualified as a pharmaceutical chemist, John Verrall gained 35 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry, during which time he was involved in both human and veterinary medicines. He has taken a particular interest in the use, misuse and abuse of products in their veterinary and animal health applications. He is a member of the Government's Veterinary Products Committee, and represents the Council on the Codex Alimentarius Consumer Group of the Food Standards Agency and at Consumer and Stakeholder Liaison meetings with the Veterinary Medicines Directorate. He now also attends the recently formed Defra committee concerned with Animal Health and Welfare chaired by the Chief Veterinary Officer, Dr Debbie Reynolds. He was formerly Chairman of the Farm and Food Society. Back to top