T07 Programme Review 2008

The Agency's Food Allergy and Intolerance Branch is organising a five-year review of its Research Programme. The review will take place on 19th – 20th February 2008, and will consist of a two day open meeting during which there will be presentations and discussion on those research projects being reviewed as well as a horizon scanning session to identify possible future research priorities. This will be followed by a closed session on the following day for the review panel and FSA officers only, during which the formal review of individual projects will take place, in accordance with standard Agency procedures.

The Agency has a large Food Allergy & Intolerance Research Programme (~£1million/year), which was originally set up in 1994 by what was then the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF), to investigate the causes and mechanisms of severe food allergy, with emphasis on peanut allergy, in order to reduce the incidence and severity.

Since that time the Programme has evolved, informed by a formal Programme Review in 2003, to incorporate funding of research projects in other areas of relevance to Agency policy needs on food allergy and intolerance. This includes the prevalence of food allergy in the UK, identifying risk factors associated with the development of food allergy, and research to review evidence on thresholds for sensitivity to gluten in the context of coeliac disease.

The purpose of this review will be to evaluate the projects that have together made up the Programme since 2003, in terms of their scientific quality, relevance to Agency policy needs, and value for money, and to determine whether these projects have addressed the aims and objectives of the Programme. An additional aim of the review will be to consider the future direction of the Programme and to discuss priority areas for Agency research in food allergy and intolerance for the next 5 years, in order to support Agency policy needs in the future.

The review will encompass T07 research projects that were commissioned after 2003, as well as some projects which were commissioned before 2003 but for which results were not available in time to be considered under the previous programme review.

The review will consist of presentations and discussions on these projects in the context of the research questions and Agency policy needs that they were commissioned to address. The event will be structured around 7 different research themes with a total of 18 research projects being presented.

An independent expert panel of reviewers, with expertise in the subject areas of relevance to the programme, is being convened to assist the Agency in evaluating the research programme.

The review meeting will be held on the 19th – 20th February 2008 at the Castle Hotel in Windsor.