Save Britain’s food research lab, say scientists

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Save Britain’s food research lab, say scientists

Scientists at Britain’s top biotechnology research body warned their employer not to withdraw from the key public health field of food research.

The scientists’ union Prospect was commenting on a statement to staff by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council that it had deferred till December a decision on whether to transfer all the assets of the Institute of Food Research, based in Norwich, to the University of East Anglia.

"Transfer would be a fundamentally bad decision for British science and for public health," said Nigel Titchen, President of the union’s Science, Engineering and Technology Group. "Staff have argued strongly for BBSRC to choose the ‘embedded’ option rather than transfer. This is an innovative proposal which has the backing of all major stakeholders, including IFR’s Governing Body, senior management and staff and would keep IFR as a public resource."

Transfer would put at risk IFR’s practical, outcome-focussed science. "We would see the break-up of world-class teams and loss of the independence which makes IFR’s judgement respected in Whitehall, Europe and worldwide," said Titchen.

Prospect is calling for the institute to be embedded within UEA rather than merged, to avoid disruption to its structure and working practices, and to preserve its critical mass. Last week, Titchen told a BBSRC Council meeting that it should be spending its scarce resources on science rather than paying millions of pounds to transfer employees out of BBSRC.

The embedded option would retain all the benefits of synergy and collaborative working with UEA, rather than stripping BBSRC of internal research capacity and disrupting IFR’s important research programmes. The union will be raising the issue at a meeting between Prospect and the Government’s Chief Scientific Advisor, Sir David King.

The IFR transfer proposal follows similar decisions affecting the Roslin Research Institute and the Institute for Grassland and Environmental Research, which are being transferred out of BBSRC to the Universities of Edinburgh and Aberystwyth respectively by April 2008.

Two hundred scientists work at IFR’s Norwich site, where they carry out research into nutrition and food safety programmes like diet and cancer prevention, and food-borne diseases like salmonella and campylobacter.