Domestic food safety practices exploring what is happening behind our kitchen doors

Abstract

This submission lays out the prima facie case for the consideration of the award of Doctor of Philosophy by Published Work to Mary Brennan, School of Agriculture, Food and Rural Development, University of Newcastle upon Tyne. The submission is made up of three parts: Part 1: The Doctoral Statement Part 2: The Set of Submitted Publications Part 3: Additional Required Documentation A set of nine publications have been chosen to represent the range of research undertaken. The articles are presented in a logical (though not necessarily chronological) order. Concise summaries of each publication, and a review of the research skills developed by the candidate are presented in section 2. The publications are summarised in the order in which the candidate suggests they should be read. The submission consists of two types of publications: Core and Supplementary (Table A). The set of six core publications was produced from one research project funded by Safefood – the Food Safety Promotions Board, Ireland. The project was entitled “Novel Food Risk Communication” and was conducted on the Island of Ireland (IOI) between July 2003 and July 2005. The project was jointly developed by the candidate and her co-investigator Dr Mary McCarthy (University College Cork, Ireland). In addition to Dr McCarthy, there were 4 other members of staff who contributed to the Safefood project: Professor Alan Kelly (Food Safety expert); Professor Chris Ritson (candidates supervisor and specialist in food consumer and marketing research); Ms Martine De Boer (Research Assistant, 2003-2005, UCC); & (Dr Nicola Thompson (Research Assistant, 2004-2005, Newcastle University). All six of the core publications are joint authored papers. The three supplementary publications comprise of two joint authored book chapters and one single authored paper. These supplementary publications were produced from two additional research projects that the candidate has been involved in between 2002-2010. Kusnesof & Brennan (2004), a book chapter, presents a review of food risk and safety research. It was produced from research conducted for a project funded by the Food Standards Agency entitled ‘Communicating Food Risk Uncertainty’. This project was key to the development of the candidate’s research skills and provided her with both the training and publications iii record to successfully develop the Safefood project in collaboration with Dr McCarthy. Kuznesof and Brennan (2004) provided some of the academic base from which the Safefood project was developed. The second project entitled Quality Low Input Food (QLIF) was an EU funded 6th Framework integrated project. The candidate was part of the co-ordinating team that developed the full project and a member of the consumer sub project co-ordination team based at Newcastle. Ritson & Brennan (2008) and Brennan (2008) report on QLIF research findings. These three supplementary publications, linked by the candidates focus on exploring consumer attitudes to food and food safety, provide further evidence of the academic experience and skills the candidate has developed over the course of this doctoral period. Formal written confirmation from all co-authors of the candidate’s contribution to each publication has been obtained and can be found in Part 3, Section 1.