00:00 First of all, can I just get your name please?
00:02 Heather Kelman.
00:03 Okay, I'm going to just double check this.
00:07 Heather, you are?
00:09 Chair of Food Standards Scotland.
00:11 Okay.
00:12 Okay, so we just wanted to know what is Food Standards Scotland doing here at the Royal Highland Show?
00:17 We love coming to the Royal Highland Show because this is the place where everybody that's involved in food comes together
00:22 and we get an opportunity to network with people who are in policy or in research or production or sales, retail
00:29 and gives us a good chance to find out what's current in their agendas, what their priorities are for the next coming year,
00:36 how we can be supportive, but also a chance to communicate the challenges that we've got.
00:40 So, for example, one of the things that I will be speaking about is the importance of public health nutrition
00:46 and trying to improve the diet of the Scottish people to try and improve our overall health and wellbeing.
00:52 But we also talk about the importance of good quality animal feed because that feeds into the food chain
00:58 and we've also got food safety issues such as making sure that hygiene practices are followed, that legislation is followed.
01:05 So we network as much as possible to try and do the best we can for ensuring Scotland's got a sustainable, safe and nutritious diet.
01:14 Okay. On that, you say you want to try and promote healthy, good, nutritious food.
01:19 I mean, there's so much in Scotland, but I feel like often it gets a bit overlooked and we don't see it enough, you know,
01:24 sort of day to day walking down the street. Does Food Standards Scotland, do you have any kind of,
01:28 apart from networking and meeting different food companies, do you have other pushes that you do
01:34 to try and encourage people to, you know, have a better diet in Scotland?
01:39 Yes, we've got a nutrition team, a substantial nutrition team, who look at the evidence about where diet affects our health
01:47 and what improvements could be made and how we can go about that.
01:50 And we've just recently published our most up to date nutrition, public health nutrition strategy,
01:56 which is just an outline of the actions, areas that we think need to be addressed.
02:00 And the main one would be the food environment, but actually trying to make sure that when you go into a supermarket
02:06 or into a restaurant, you've got the information and the options to choose a healthy, balanced diet there.
02:13 Because at the moment, sometimes you might not have the access to the information, you don't always know what's on your plate
02:18 or in a restaurant or in your bag when you finish the shopping.
02:22 But also the way that food is marketed to you, your choices can be constrained a little bit.
02:29 So trying to make sure that healthy food gets as much attention as a lot of the other discretionary foods
02:36 that we could maybe do with eating a little bit less.
02:39 And Scotland's very good at making both healthy food and discretionary food, so it's getting that balance right.
02:45 You mentioned that you're going to be giving a talk this weekend at the Royal Highland Show.
02:50 What kind of things will you be, whether it's your...
02:53 Not a talk.
02:54 Not a talk. Oh, sorry, I thought you meant as in you're going to be... Is it talking to people who come by?
02:57 Just talking to people. I mean, a lot of the research that we fund is actually being discussed here this weekend.
03:03 So it's just more about networking for us here.
03:07 We do other places where we will do presentations and talks, such as conferences, etc.
03:14 But here, for us, it's more about just sitting down with other key people, key stakeholders,
03:20 and just having a conversation and really try to understand both sides of the agenda.
03:24 Whether it's a manufacturing or a retail or a production issue, we need to understand that
03:29 so we can look at the evidence and see what changes would be best for everybody.
03:34 Can you pick something that Food Standards Scotland's kind of proud of or that it's achieved in the last year
03:39 or something that you're happy to talk about and share?
03:42 Gosh, yes. Well, there's so many things I'm proud of about Food Standards Scotland.
03:46 I was just trying to pick out one.
03:48 I mean, we have a fantastic food crime unit that actually does its best to protect the reputation of Scotland's food
03:53 by identifying those people that are breaking the law and bringing them to task.
03:58 So not going into much detail, but one case did actually reach court where the food crime unit
04:04 had been really instrumental in bringing that to the court's attention and making sure the person was prosecuted.
04:11 So that's a great result.
04:13 And we've obviously got a few of those kinds of incidents go on, which we can't talk about until the court case is over
04:19 because you can't actually influence the outcome of the trial in that.
04:24 But the food crime unit does a great job.
04:27 Nutritionally, the vitamin D campaign that we started up during COVID, that worked really well.
04:35 And the advertising for that was so accessible, you know, the glow tents and encouraging people to come in.
04:43 We've also been doing work with individual supermarkets, such as Morrison's about Campylobacter,
04:49 which is a huge problem in terms of a foodborne illness.
04:53 So there's lots of little bits and it all comes together.
04:56 We're just looking at foodborne illness again, getting an update and about to start some new work on that
05:02 to try and find some way that we can look forward, horizon scan about the risks from foodborne illness
05:10 and try and pick some of that to really be aware before things get out of hand.
05:15 Is there a problem arising in an area? How do we go about addressing that?
05:19 So it's not a problem at the moment. We're fine.
05:22 But it's just being able to have those triggers in place and trying to look a little bit ahead of ourselves.
05:28 There's so many departments I could talk forever about the work that's going on.
05:32 Our publication of our nutrition strategy earlier this year, I think that's actually something that's a launch of
05:38 trying to work with all stakeholders that are involved in feeding the public to see what we can do
05:43 to contribute to improving Scotland's public health.
05:46 And that's a really important thing for all of us.
05:49 The nation's not got a very healthy diet.
05:52 So that's great.
