Mark Woolfe

Biography:

Dr Mark Woolfe FIFST, FRSC: Trained as a food scientist/technologist and has worked in industry and universities in the UK, West Africa, and South America, before joining MAFF in 1984, and the FSA in 1999/2000. His responsibilities covered labelling and standards for the EU Single Market legislation, as well as UK Regulations on a range of specific foods. He has been active in both British and international standards committees (Codex, UN/ECE). He was responsible for the Government’s Food Authenticity Programme for 15 years to develop novel methods and organised national surveys to identify mislabelling/misdescription and fraud. He worked closely with enforcement laboratories and local authorities to transfer new methodology and investigate food fraud. Although retired in 2009, he has continued to be actively involved in food authenticity, chairing the Royal Society of Chemistry Committee on Food and Feed Authenticity supervising research projects. He has been the Secretary of the Food Authenticity Network,  an open access resource for authenticity methods and fraud mitigation, since its inception in 2015, and in 2018-21, chaired the UK BSI mirror Committee for CEN TC460 Food Authenticity. He still acts as an external assessor for EU research proposals and projects.