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FFrom: Tom McMeekin [mailto:Tom.McMeekin@utas.edu.au]
Sent: Thursday, 27 November 2003 05:09
To: fao.who.psaforum
Subject: cluster 2 papers

Cluster 2 Papers

General

Cluster 2 papers deal with legal aspects (2a) of, and transparency issues (2b) associated with, the provision of expert advice to FAO/WHO, and Paper 2c (considered below) addresses the important question of selection of experts. Here, the guiding principle is to provide FAO/WHO with the best available experts in the field, but this ideal must be tempered with other criteria, including:
" availability to participate fully in the timeframe of the consultation,
" opportunity to commit sufficient time, usually in the context of the expert also having a "day" job, and
" ability (flexibility) to act as a member of a panel rather than as an individual with a particular viewpoint.

These criteria are a function of both the individual and the organization by which that individual is employed. An ideal situation would be to identify an expert employed by an organization with risk assessment interests similar to that of a planned FAO/WHO consultation, as mutual benefit will be derived from the outputs of the consultation. Such an organization would necessarily need to have a liberal attitude to sharing food safety information with FAO/WHO.

Ideal situations are notoriously difficult to achieve and the practical imperative for FAO/WHO is to increase the potential pool of experts willing to participate in consultations. The following groups are suggested as potential targets.

Food Industry Personnel

In my limited experience with JEMRA activities, the panels appear to be dominated by members from government agencies and academia with lesser representation coming from industry employees. FAO/WHO should consider mechanisms that would encourage industry personnel to participate in consultations. There is little reason to suspect that, because much food safety knowledge is in the public good category, the constraints placed on sharing such information by industry would be more restrictive than those imposed by some government agencies. Potentially there is a very large pool of experts in industry, many of whom already contribute to expert groups such as ICMSF, IFT committees, etc. An example of industry working closely with government for a common food safety purpose was the composition of the expert committees set up to produce Food MicroModel in the UK. Currently, industry, government and academia collaborate in the French predictive modelling initiative Symp Previus.

Food Safety Consultants

Consultants in food safety are another private sector group who could provide significant skills to expert panels. In particular, the need for pragmatism and the ability to bring a consultation to a reasonable conclusion in a specified timeframe would benefit the process and aid the task of the Secretariat. As people in this category may well be self-employed, a case could be argued for payment to mitigate the financial effects of time away from their core business and income source.

Retirees

Within the expert community, from whatever background, there are many "retired" or "semi-retired" scientists. This is a group with an enormous library of knowledge that could be put to significant use in a consultation. Currently, several remain active by writing very significant review articles. This is also a group with the requisite knowledge level and, importantly, perhaps time to engage fully in an FAO/WHO consultation. Moreover, committee experience gained over many years also suggests that they would be valuable panel members in guiding a debate to sound scientific conclusions. Finally, they could act as mentors to aid the development of young and less experienced panel members.

Recruiting through professional bodies

Another strategy worthy of consideration is for the secretariat to route their call for experts through appropriate professional bodies, for example, as Dr Groth suggested, National Academies of Science. In Australia, the appropriate Academy is the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, the membership of which includes several food science oriented Fellows. Academies, because of their standing in national scientific communities, are useful conduits to facilitate high-level discussions with government and industry.

There are many professional groups through which potential experts could be made aware of the requirements of FAO/WHO for experts to provide advice, including National Societies of Microbiology and of Food Science and Technology. A simple expedient could be an article describing the consultation process and current FAO/WHO requirements for experts in their "in house" journals. Many of these societies come together in international conglomerates such as IUMS, IUoFST, etc., which have specialist committees dealing with food safety issues. Examples include, the International Committee for Food Microbiology and Hygiene (ICFMH) and the International Commission for Microbiological Specifications for Foods (ICMSF). I suspect that either of these would welcome the opportunity to interact with FAO/WHO and assist in the process of alerting potential experts for RA panels.

Professor TA McMeekin
Professor of Microbiology
Co-Director, Australian Food Safety Centre of Excellence
School of Agricultural Science/Tasmanian Institute of Agricultural Research
University of Tasmania
Private Bag 54
Hobart TAS 7001 Australia
Phone +61 3 62262637
Fax +61 3 62262642