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This project evaluates the impact of dietary health interventions for improving Scotland's diet and nutrition, and investigates whether and how their impact varies over time and across demographic groups. It also investigates potential unintended consequences of implementing the dietary interventions (for example, increased health inequalities).
This project consists of an analysis of the Scottish demand for fruits and vegetables to help produce a detailed set of scenarios and recommendations about the scope and potential value of increasing soft fruit and vegetable production in Scotland. We are addressing topics such as: consumers' willingness to buy products out of season, consumers' interest on alternative to supermarkets retailing models, consumers' provenance preferences, and interest in plant-based products.
This project is developing tools and a framework to serve as the basis for future reviewing of the resilience of supply chains. These tools are used to understand the vulnerabilities and strengths within the Scottish food and drink supply chain – as a whole and sub-industry specific. The supply chains we are considering are pigs, beef, dairy and potatoes. Finally, within each supply chain, the project is identifying practical applications of the framework to demonstrate the value of investment and novel forms of intervention.
This project is generating a new practical understanding of how current Scottish food production matches or differs compared to consumption patterns of Scottish households. We are using the information about the mismatch between local supply and demand to identify opportunities for increased food security and generating insights between what is produced and what should be consumed based on recommendations. We are also identifying how climate change may affect the local food supply and discuss how to deliver increased resilience.
This project maps major food supply chains both within Scotland and those where Scottish industries are heavily involved to improve our understanding of how hey operate. To achieve this aim, we propose a methodology to be able to update changes in the maps, a modelled analysis of individual sectors that demonstrates where value is created, added, and lost during the supply chain, and to use the modelled analysis to simulate various scenarios whereby the value in the supply chain could be increased and distributed in Scotland among producers and processors.
Effective business relationships in vertical supply chains are thought to: (a) reduce uncertainty (b) improve access to crucial resources and ⁄or (c) raise business productivity. This project aims to review the status-quo of collaboration and engagement between various stages of Scotland’s food and drink supply chain; to identify those points under acute pressure in the wake of recent shocks and recognising their strengths and weaknesses; and to identify means by which collaboration can be enhanced.
Using large datasets related to trade, launching of products, and consumer purchases, this project is studying current trends in markets relevant for the Scottish food and drink sector.
The aim of this project is to characterise and quantify the flow of antimicrobial resistance genes within and from livestock holdings to the wider environment and human population, to inform antimicrobial stewardship and optimal use, and human risk via the food chain. Using a study site with pig, beef, poultry and sheep holdings, we are generating top-down descriptions of antimicrobial resistance patterns found in the environment and matching them with bottom-up hypothesis testing with experimental characterisation of the processes driving antimicrobial resistance gene flow through the system
Per head of population, more cases of human illness from infection with Shiga toxin producing E. coli (STECs) occur in Scotland than elsewhere in the United Kingdom. We use detailed information from whole-genome sequences to improve knowledge of STEC that exist in the ecosystems of Scottish dairy cattle, sheep, farmed deer and leafy produce. We compare them with sequenced isolates from Scottish human cases, to help develop ways to reduce the burden of disease in the Scottish human population. We also investigate if current laboratory diagnostic detection methods can be improved, which would
This project answers some of the key questions related to the spread of zoonotic pathogens and will inform on transmission events of pathogens between livestock and humans (and vice versa). In addition, this project offers potential practical solutions to the increase in spread of vectors (ticks) and associated diseases. We are also developing and consolidating approaches quickly adaptable to the investigation of zoonotic outbreaks and/or newly emerging diseases as required.