Transparency data

Committee and sub-group members

Published 25 June 2026

1. Dr Camilla Alexander-White (Chair)

Dr Alexander-White is a chemical safety assessor of 25 years’ plus experience and strategic advisor to the cosmetics and foods sectors on assuring the safety of product-critical ingredients or contaminants coming under regulatory scrutiny in Europe. She is a Eurotox registered toxicologist (ERT), chartered chemist (CChem) and Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC). After a decade at Unilever working on developing novel approach methodologies (NAM) for safety testing without animals and as Programme Manager covering safety programmes for foods and cosmetics products, she worked as Principal Scientist in human health at the Environment Agency (England and Wales) and then as Senior Manager with the global consultancy company Ramboll Environ. She has worked on regulatory dossiers across USA and EU on a wide range of challenging and globally critical product ingredients, novel foods products and environmental contaminants in air, soil, water and waste.

Dr Alexander-White works with consortia to develop safety strategies, facilitates round table discussions and workshops on safety issues and strategies, prepares safety dossiers for critical product ingredients and performs science advocacy and diplomacy work at UK & European Level.  In her work, she looks at the use and acceptance of Novel Approach Methods (NAM) in regulatory risk assessment. She works for the RSC as senior policy advisor, and over the past 3 years has been advising the government on chemical regulation post Brexit and on the development of a new Chemicals Strategy for the UK. She is also Vice-Chair of the board at LHASA Ltd UK, a not-for-profit organisation developing the use of a suite of in silico predictive toxicology approaches for chemical and drug safety assessment.

2. Professor Alastair Macrae

Professor Macrae is a Senior Lecturer in Farm Animal Health and Production, and Head of the Dairy Herd Health and Productivity Service (DHHPS) at the Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies at the University of Edinburgh.

3. Dr Andy Greenfield

Dr Greenfield was a Programme Leader in Developmental Genetics at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Harwell Institute for over 25 years and chaired its Animal Welfare and Ethical Review Board (AWERB) for 10 years. His research made use of cutting-edge genetic technologies to shed light on gene function and disease. From 2009 to 2018, he was a member of the Human Fertilisation & Embryology Authority (HFEA), and in 2014 and 2016 chaired the two expert scientific panels that assessed the safety and efficacy of mitochondrial replacement techniques. He was a member of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics (NCoB, 2014-2020) and chaired its working group that reported on ethical issues surrounding genome editing in 2016. From 2019-2020, he was a member of the National Academies of Sciences International Commission on Heritable Human Genome Editing. He was also a member of the taskforce that advised on the 2021 update to the guidelines of the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR), as well as a member of the NCoB working group that reported on the ethics of genome editing in farmed animals in 2021.

Dr Greenfield is currently a member of the Regulatory Horizons Council (RHC), the Human Tissue Authority (HTA) and an honorary research fellow at the Nuffield Department of Women’s & Reproductive Health, University of Oxford.

4. Dr Anton Alldrick

Dr Alldrick is a graduate of the University of London, obtaining a BSc in Biochemistry in 1976 and a PhD in pharmacy (studying the genetics of bacterial drug resistance) in 1980. After graduation, he worked in laboratories based in the UK, US and Switzerland as a research and regulatory toxicologist specialising in carcinogen metabolism. Dr Alldrick joined Campden BRI in 1990 and held a number of management positions before being appointed Special Projects Manager. He retired in August 2021 and is currently a director of A & M Alldrick Ltd, which provides consultancy services to the agri-food sector. He is an author/co-author of over 80 publications aimed at scientific and/or industrial audiences.

5. Professor Bruce Whitelaw

Professor Whitelaw is an academic who provides leadership within academia and the animal biotechnology sectors. He holds the Chair of Animal Biotechnology at the University of Edinburgh and was the Director of The Roslin Institute, a BBSRC strategically funded Institute embedded in the Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies at the Easter Bush Campus of the University of Edinburgh. Through his bioscience research reflected in nearly 200 scientific manuscripts and 12 patents, he pioneered the application of genetic technologies in farmed animals, including the impactful project to produce precision bred pigs that are resistant to Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Virus which has been taken forward into the commercial sector by Genus Ltd; and recently produced precision bred pigs resistant to Classical Swine Fever Virus. Bruce is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology and was a member of the Nuffield Council’s Genome Editing and Farm Animals Working Group.

6. Dr Cathrina Edwards

Dr Edwards leads a research group within the Food, Microbiome and Health programme at Quadram Institute Bioscience in Norwich, UK. Her research group uses various in vitro digestion models to study the rate, extent and site of release of nutrients from foods during gastro-intestinal transit, and undertake human studies to assess the metabolic consequences. Current research activities are focussed on understanding the mechanisms limiting bioaccessibility of starch and protein from pulses. The group are also working with the food industry that develop alternative processing methods to optimise the nutritional value of pulses and other crops.

Dr Edwards has a PhD in Nutritional Sciences from King’s College London 2010-2014 and has held various postdoc positions (at King’s College London) and a Career Progression Fellowship (at the Institute of Food Research), Norwich, before securing her current Career Track Group Leader position in Dec 2017.

Dr Edwards has pioneered the development of a novel food ingredient, PulseON® (PulseOn Food Ingredients Ltd), and continues to be passionate about translational and impactful research.

7. Professor Clare Mills

Professor Mills moved to the University of Surrey to take up her current position in June 2022 and her research group is now based in the School of Biosciences. She also has honorary appointments at the University of Manchester and Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust. She is now applying molecular science to understand, better diagnose and treat allergic and associated respiratory disease. She has led several international EU-funded projects in food allergy collectively worth around €23M. This included the EuroPrevall project 63 partners from 17 countries, including India, China, Russia and Ghana, spanning clinical science, epidemiology, social science, biochemical and immunological sciences, academia and industry. After moving to the University of Manchester she led the 38 partner, iFAAM project which sought to exploit much of the knowledge gained in EuroPrevall to develop tools and approaches to enable more effective management of food allergies. She also led the FSA-funded PAFA project which has allowed the prevalence of food allergy to be estimated in the adult population.

Professor Mill’s research interest is focussed around the relationship between biophysical properties of proteins and their structural attributes within the context of behaviour during digestion in the gastrointestinal tract, and in particular with regards what makes some foods, like peanut, more allergenic than others, and why some food proteins become allergens.

8. Professor Dimitris Charalampopoulos

Professor Charalampopoulos is a Professor of Food Biotechnology at the University of Reading. His research interests include microbial fermentation to produce platform and speciality chemicals, the development of functional food ingredients including bioactive oligosaccharides and probiotic bacterial cultures, as well as the valorisation of food waste and by-products focusing primarily on fibre and protein components.

Professor Charalampopoulos has published more than 85 papers on food bioprocessing, functional foods and waste valorisation and has been involved in several multi-partner research programmes. He was the Director of the BBSRC Network FoodWasteNet (2014-2019), and is currently Co-Director of the BBSRC Biomass Biorefinery Network (BBNet) and Senior Editor of the journal Food Chemistry

9. Dr Elizabeth Lund

Dr Lund is a freelance consultant in the area of research ethics and nutritional study design. She is currently alternate vice-chair of West London Gene Therapy Advisory Committee and Research Ethics Committee as well as having over 20 years of research experience.

Dr Lund is experienced in both food research and ethics. She is the Alternate Vice-Chair of The West London & GTAC (Gene Therapy Advisory Committee) NHS Research Ethics Committee. She now works on the fundamental biology underlying the maintenance of epithelial cell structure, having previously taught on research ethics and nutrition at The University of East Anglia where she holds an honorary senior lectureship. She has over 20 years’ experience in ethical review of research both within the UK and EU and has a strong interest in how science is communicated to the general public, ensuring information is accessible and unbiased and that results are fully published.

Experienced as a research leader in nutrition and gastrointestinal biology at The Institute of Food Research until 2010, Dr Lund focussed on the impact of diet on chronic disease of the colon including collaborating with researchers across Norwich Research Park both at University of East Anglia and The John Innes Centre.

10. Professor George Bassel

Professor Bassel is a Professor of Plant Science at The University of Warwick. His research makes use of molecular and computational approaches towards the targeted improvement of crop plants using gene editing.

11. Professor Gunter Kuhnle

Professor Kuhnle is a Professor of Nutrition and Food Science at the University of Reading. His research interest is the development of objective measures of exposure and dietary intake using a range of different analytical techniques. Further interests are the link between diet and health, in particular the health effect of polyphenols and the link between meat and cancer.

12. Professor Hans Verhagen

Professor Verhagen is a Food Safety and Nutrition consultant following his retirement from EFSA in 2020 where he was the Head of the Risk Assessment and Scientific Assistance Department as well as a Senior Scientific Officer. He is an alumnus of Universities of Nijmegen (Netherlands) and Paris studying chemistry, as well as having a PhD in food toxicology from the University of Maastricht (Netherlands). He has a wide range of experience having worked at the TNO Nutrition and Food Research Institute (Netherlands), Unilever (Netherlands), National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM; Netherlands). Professor Verhagen has served on many editorial boards of scientific journals. He has been editor-in-chief of “Food & Chemical Toxicology” and the “European Journal of Nutrition & Food Safety”.

Professor Verhagen is a board-certified toxicologist and nutritionist. He has served as a member of the EFSA-NDA panel for 9 years, working on novel foods and health claims. He is a Visiting Professor at the University of Ulster and The Technical University of Denmark. He has a large number of publications on toxicology, food safety and nutrition.

13. Professor Huw D Jones

Professor Jones is Professor of Translational Genomics for Plant Breeding at IBERS Aberystwyth University. His research applies biotechnology approaches to study functional genomics in cereals with a current focus on gene editing. He also has interests in plant tissue culture, chloroplast transformation, RNAi and in validating promoters for targeting expression to pre-defined tissues. As a university academic he collaborates widely and has published over 110 research papers, books and other articles in plant molecular genetics and biotechnology.

In addition to his research and teaching interests he has expertise in risk assessment and food safety. He is a member of the Defra committee ACRE (Advisory Committee on Releases to the Environment), the Aberystwyth University GM safety committee and served on the GMO panel of European Food Safety Authority from 2009-2018, the last two years as vice-chair. He has also co-authored over 150 scientific risk assessment opinions and guidance documents for EFSA.

Professor Jones has an MSc (Biotechnology), a PhD (Molecular Biology and Intracellular Signalling) from Bristol University and was awarded Fellowship of the Royal Society of Biology (FRSB) in 2002. He has experience of chairing expert groups such as the EFSA GMO panel, the UK Plant Sciences Federation Working Group on Regulatory Frameworks and sessions on safety of genome editing at the OECD Conference Paris, June 2018. He is a member of the management board and working group leader of the iPLANTA EU COST Action (CA15223 Modifying plants to produce interfering RNA) and a member of the PlantEd EU COST Action (CA18111 Genome editing in plants - a technology with transformative potential).

14. Dr Isabel Skypala

Dr Skypala BSc PhD is a consultant dietitian who runs the adult food allergy service at the Royal Brompton & Harefield Hospital.

Dr Skypala commenced her career at the Royal Brompton Hospital in London, specialising in food allergy, asthma and cystic fibrosis. After 5 years, she became the manager of the Dietetic service, and in 2002 was appointed as Director of Rehabilitation and Therapies, responsible for managing therapy and  psycho-social services across the Royal Brompton & Harefield NHS Trust (RBHT). In 2008, Isabel established the adult food allergy service at RBHT, and in 2014 she became the UKs first consultant allergy dietitian, with responsibility for the food allergy service, including food challenge, outpatient clinics and management of the allergy nurses. In 2009, Isabel was awarded a PhD from Kings College London for her research into the prevalence and diagnosis of Pollen Food Syndrome (PFS). Her research continues to be focussed on plant food allergy, and she has published over 70 peer-reviewed papers and books. Isabel also lectures on Allergy MSc programmes at Imperial College, Southampton University and Cork University, as well as nationally and internationally. Together with others, Isabel has spent the last 20 years developing the dietitian’s role in food allergy through the establishment of allergy specialist groups in the UK, Europe and world-wide. She was a member of the executive Committee of the European Academy of Allergy & Clinical Immunology for 7 years, and currently sits on the council of the British Society of Allergy & Clinical Immunology (BSACI) and co-chairs the Standards of Care Committee. Isabel received the BSACI William Frankland award for services to clinical allergy in 2014, and the Allied Health Professional Recognition Award from the American Academy of Asthma, Allergy & Immunology in 2022.

15. Dr Lynn McIntyre

Dr McIntyre is a Food Microbiologist with a BSc (Hons) degree in Microbiology from the University of Glasgow and a PhD in Food Science from the University of Guelph, Canada. Her research and teaching specialisms including: food safety in poultry, red meat, dairy and produce production; food preservation methods including bacteriophages; evaluating the shelf-life of foods through durability and challenge testing; and rapid detection methods for hygiene and food safety. In New Zealand she worked as a Lecturer then Senior Lecturer at Massey University, and latterly as a Senior Research Scientist, managing microbial food safety contract research for the New Zealand Food Safety Authority before returning to the UK in 2010 to take up a position at Harper Adams University and is now a Principal Lecturer there. She is a reviewer for various Food Microbiology journals and served as an Associate Editor for the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture for ten years.

16. Dr Meera Cush

Dr Cush has over 20 years’ experience in human health toxicological risk assessment and regulatory toxicology Meera has experience in risk assessment of chemicals found in food and food contact materials, industrial chemicals, biocides and of consumer products. 

Having previously worked as a toxicologist for Health Protection Agency/Public Health England and several consultancies Dr Cush has collaborated and led diverse international teams initiating, designing and delivering on research and innovation projects. Her current role is as a Senior Managing Consultant in Regulatory Toxicology at Ramboll UK Limited where she leads the UK Health Sciences team. She has extensive experience in interpreting and advising on complex risk assessment scenarios for novel and innovative food and food ingredients, writing safety (toxicological) dossiers, devising responsible product development / product stewardship strategies, mitigating risk and communicating this to stakeholders. Meera’s interests are in mechanistic toxicology with a regulatory focus.

Dr Cush is appointed to the Committee on Carcinogenicity of Chemicals in Food, Consumer Products and the Environment (COC), Committee on Toxicity of Chemicals in Food, Consumer Products and the Environment (COT) and sits on the REACH Independent Scientific Experts Pool for the Health and Safety Executive. 

17. Professor Paul Fraser

Professor Fraser is Head of Plant Molecular Sciences, at Royal Holloway University of London. His works cover the disciplines of biochemistry, molecular biology and genetics, and integrative biology. Focussing on the biosynthesis, regulation and metabolic engineering of industrial and nutritional isoprenoids both in plants and microorganisms.

Over a 25 year period working in academia and industry, over 140 peer-reviewed publications have been generated in the field. To date Professor Fraser has coordinated several large integrated EU projects, such as DISCO ERA-IB PROCAR project and acted as the Chair of the management board for the BBSRC-NIBB network for High Vale Chemicals from Plants.

18. Professor Paul Haggarty

Professor Haggarty is a Professor of Nutrition at the Rowett Institute of Nutrition and Health, University of Aberdeen. His research is concerned with epigenetics and nutritional metabolism and the development of novel methods to determine provenance in the human food chain. He is Deputy Lead on a multi-disciplinary, multi-centre UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Action Against Child Stunting hub designed to reduce global undernutrition and stunting in low-income countries. He has served on the UK Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition and the UK The Committee on Toxicity of Chemicals in Food, Consumer Products and the Environment. His research is funded by Scottish Government and UKRI.

19. Dr Ray Kemp

Dr Kemp is a nationally and internationally recognised expert in the effective communication of risk for both ionising and non-ionising radiation. He specialises in the public understanding of science and the perception of risk. Based in the UK near Cambridge, until 2019 he was Honorary Professorial Fellow in risk communication at the, University of Wollongong, New South Wales, and also Adjunct Professor of Risk and Sustainability at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne.

Dr Kemp is a Past President of the Society for Risk Analysis, Europe, and previously held the position of Hon. Visiting Professor of Risk Communication at the University of Surrey, Guildford, UK. A social scientist, Ray also qualified as a Chartered Town Planner, and his PhD was in Planning and Nuclear Decision Making.

Dr Kemp was appointed by the Australian Federal Government to the main Advisory Council of the Australian Nuclear Regulator (ARPANSA) and was a member, then Chair Elect then, Chair from 2012 – 2015.  He then facilitated the Independent Expert Panel advising the Australian Federal Government on the identification of a suitable site for Australia’s National Radioactive Waste Facility.

Dr Kemp is currently a member of various (multi-disciplinary) UK Scientific Advisory Committees dealing with health and safety risks. Including the Committee on Medical Aspects of Radiation in the Environment (CoMARE). He also served three terms as a member of the UK Department of Health and Social Care’s Advisory Committee on Carcinogenicity of Chemicals in Foods, Consumer Products and the Environment (COC) 2013 – 2022. From 2017-2023 he was a member of the Office for Road and Rail (ORR) Expert Consumer Panel providing independent advice on consumer aspects of the ORR’s role as safety, economic, consumer and competition regulator of the UK rail industry and major road network.

Dr Kemp is a non-executive director in the UK Department of Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) and a member of the UK Committee on Radioactive Waste Management (CoRWM) chairing the Subcommittee on Planning and Regulation. He served on the 2022-2024 International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Expert Mission advising the Japanese Ministry of Environment on the management of the significant volumes of contaminated soil that have been generated following the 2011 nuclear accident at Fukushima. Dr Kemp was honoured to have been invited to be a member of the second Mission 2026-2028.

Dr Kemp held tenure in the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia before embarking on an environmental and engineering consulting career in 1991. He has advised on risk management and communication for various government organisations in Europe, the USA, the Far East and Australia, including the Health & Safety Executive, the WHO, the World Bank, the UK Environment Agencies, and the IAEA, as well as on major infrastructure projects for various organisations.

In 2022 he was pleased be elected to honorary membership of the Royal College of Radiologists in recognition of his service to the College’s Curriculum Committee and the Speciality Training Board.

20. Professor Sophie Foley

Professor Foley is an Associate Professor in Microbiology at Edinburgh Napier University. Professor Foley holds a BSc (Hons) Microbiology from University College Cork (UCC), Ireland and a PhD in Molecular Microbiology also from UCC. Following her PhD she worked for a number of years in the food industry as a research scientist before joining Edinburgh Napier University as a lecturer. Her research involves the application of molecular biology and bioinformatics to the characterisation and functional analysis of bacteria and bacteriophages of particular relevance to the food industry. Her work has focused on the microbiology of fermented foods/drinks, including the characterisation and applications of lactic acid bacteria and their phages.

21. Professor Susan Fairweather-Tait

Professor Fairweather-Tait has a BSc in Food Sciences, and MSc in Nutrition University of London. After her PhD at King’s College London she worked in the food industry for a short while and then moved to the Institute of Food Research, Norwich, initially as a Senior Research Scientist and latterly as Head of the Nutrition Division and Programme Leader for Micronutrients. In 2006 she was offered a personal chair in the School of Medicine, Health Policy and Practice University of East Anglia (UAE) and moved to UEA in early 2007.

Professor Fairweather-Tait’s research interests include mineral metabolism in humans, micronutrient requirements and dietary reference values, nutrient bioavailability, health claims, and diet and ageing.

22. Professor Wendy Harwood

Professor Harwood is an Emeritus Fellow at the John Innes Centre (JIC), Norwich. Until December 2023, she was Head of the Crop Transformation Group at JIC where she also managed the BRACT Crop Transformation / Genome Editing Platform. She gained a BSc in Biological Sciences from King’s College, University of London and a PhD in Plant Biotechnology from the John Innes Institute / University of East Anglia. Wendy’s expertise includes genetic modification (GM) technologies in a range of crop species and the development and application of genome editing technologies in crops. She has experience of field trials and regulatory issues concerning GM and genome edited plants.

Professor Harwood has lectured at both the Universities of East Anglia and Cambridge; is an Honorary Professor in the School of Biological Sciences, University of East Anglia and holds a Visiting Professorship for Senior International Scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Professor Harwood served on the Food Standards Agency Advisory Committee on Animal Feeding stuffs (ACAF) from 2013 – 2019 and was seconded to the Advisory Committee on Novel Foods and Processes (ACNFP) in 2019.