Food Standards Agency
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Listen to this siteTuesday 29 October 2002
The 1st joint report by the Food Standards Agency, the Environment Agency (EA), the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) and the Environment and Heritage Services of Northern Ireland titled 'Radioactivity in Food and the Environment, 2002 (RIFE-8)' is given in the following 'pdf' format file.
The purpose of the Food Standards Agency's monitoring programme is to ensure that any radioactivity present in food does not compromise food safety and that authorised discharges of radioactivity do not result in unacceptable doses to the consumer via the diet.
The report shows that in 2002, consumers' exposure to artificially produced radioactivity via the food chain remained well below the EU annual dose limit to members of the public of 1 mSv (millisievert) for all artificial sources of radiation.
The RIFE report is the only independent report of radioactivity in food over the whole UK. The data is primarily used to assess the potential dose that might be received by members of the public eating locally grown food around the UK's nuclear sites. Other dose assessments are included for consumers in areas well away from nuclear sites where sources of naturally-occurring radiation mainly contribute to the radioactivity in the general diet.
Previous versions of the annual RIFE report have been joint publications with the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA). For the first time, the report includes data from the Environment Agency (EA) and Environment and Heritage Services of Northern Ireland (EHS). This is a major step forward, resulting in a single comprehensive report of all the government's radiological monitoring data on food and the environment in the UK.
The report contains sections on radiological dose assessment methods, recently published surveys and research, current legislation and updates on UK, EU and international commitments pertinent to the radiological protection area.
The report shows that radioactive contamination of foods is relatively minor and doses are within EU limits. It continues to provide reassurance to communities near nuclear sites that the Government has proper monitoring in place and that levels of radioactivity in food are low.
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