Think about the last time you stood in a supermarket aisle, trying to decide what to feed your family. Maybe you picked up a packet and checked the label. Maybe you remembered something you read online, or something a friend told you, or something you saw in your social media feed. In that moment, you were doing exactly what food safety regulators hope you would do: trying to make an informed choice. But the information you were drawing on may not have been accurate. As the Chief Executive of the Food Standards Agency, I have been thinking a lot about that moment, and about the quiet but powerful role that trust plays in it. Recently, I spoke to the International Heads of Food Agencies Forum about this very subject, and we also launched a new campaign to counter food-related misinformation. Because the way people find and judge information about food has changed dramatically in the last few years, and those of us who work to keep food safe need to change with it. At its heart, this is not a technical or regulatory challenge. It is a human one. It is about whether you can feel confident in the food you put on your table, whether you can tell good guidance from bad, and whether the institutions that are supposed to protect you feel like they are on your side. When trust works, the system works quietly and invisibly. When it breaks down, everything becomes harder, scarier, and more confusing.
Trust, after all, is the foundation of a safe and effective food system. We often talk about food safety in terms of rules, inspections, science, and laboratory tests, and those things matter enormously. But none of them can do their job if people do not trust the people behind them. When people trust the food they buy, the advice they receive, and the institutions that protect them, they are far better able to make informed choices and manage risk in their daily lives. They are more likely to follow safety guidance, more likely to handle food properly, and more likely to respond calmly and sensibly when something goes wrong. On the other hand, when trust is undermined, the consequences can be serious. People may ignore important warnings, or they may become anxious about perfectly safe foods. They may turn away from official advice and instead rely on rumours, half-truths, or wildly exaggerated claims. In a world where food is produced through complex global supply chains, and where consumers cannot always see exactly where their food comes from, trust is the bridge that connects people to the system. We cannot ask everyone to become an expert in food science. We can only ask them to believe in the people who are. That is why trust is not a soft, vague concept. It is a practical, essential part of food safety itself.
Misinformation has changed everything. False and misleading claims about food safety can spread rapidly online, amplified by social media, search algorithms, and increasingly by artificial intelligence. A single dramatic video, a misleading headline, or a cleverly edited clip can reach millions of people within hours, often before any official response has even been prepared. The problem is not new, but its scale and speed are completely different from anything we have seen before. During moments of heightened public interest, like high-profile food incidents, misinformation can quickly fill the information gaps. When people are worried and looking for answers, they do not wait patiently for official statements. They search, they scroll, and they share. In that vacuum, inaccurate content can flourish, sometimes presented with the same confidence and polish as genuine expert advice. It is deeply unsettling, because it means that the very moments when people most need clear, reliable information are often the moments when unreliable information is loudest. We have seen this pattern repeat again and again, and it is one of the most serious challenges facing food regulators today. It is not just that some people believe false things. It is that false information makes it harder for everyone to know what is true, and it forces people to make decisions about what they eat based on fear rather than facts.
At the Food Standards Agency, this is a critical issue. Our core mission, after all, is food you can trust. That means more than simply setting high standards and regulating effectively. It also means ensuring that people can access clear, accurate, and evidence-based information when they need it most. We were founded in 2000 to restore and protect public confidence in food, and since then we have always tried to be an open and transparent organisation. Our Board takes decisions in public at our open Board meetings. We publish a vast amount of evidence and data so that people can see the basis for our decisions. We communicate openly and transparently with the public about risk, including when there is uncertainty. We have always believed that honesty, even when it is uncomfortable, is better than opacity. But being transparent is not enough if the information we publish is not reaching people. It is not enough if it is buried in long reports, expressed in technical jargon, or simply less visible than the eye-catching claims that circulate online. We have to adapt, and we have to work much harder to make sure that our information is not only accurate, but also accessible. Because trust cannot be built from a distance. It has to be built through everyday interactions, through the information people actually find, and through the confidence they feel from that information.
The communications landscape has changed, and our response must change with it. Most people now start their search for food safety advice online, often through question-based searches or AI-generated summaries. They may never visit our website directly. They may never read a long official report. Instead, they ask a search engine why a certain additive is in their bread, or they let an AI assistant summarise the risks of a particular food. That summary might be helpful, or it might be dangerously incomplete, and people have no easy way of knowing the difference. This is why our new campaign is so important. It aims to make sure that reliable information about food can be found, understood, and trusted. We are focusing on the topics where misinformation has the greatest potential to cause concern, including food and feed additives, animal welfare, and novel foods. These are areas that people genuinely care about, and where complicated debates are often reduced to oversimplified and misleading claims. But this campaign is not about shutting down debate. We are not trying to silence questions or dismiss people’s concerns. In fact, the opposite is true. We want to make sure that the conversations we and others have are based on clear and accurate information, so that people can make up their own minds from a position of understanding, not fear. Good decisions depend on good information, and good information should be available to everyone, wherever they are and however they choose to search.
Protecting confidence in the food system depends on all of us. Regulators, businesses, scientists, and communicators share a common interest in making sure that evidence and expertise are heard. None of us can do this alone. A single official website cannot compete with an algorithm that spreads viral falsehoods. But together, we can change the balance. I encourage colleagues across these sectors to engage with this campaign, to share evidence-based content, and to help ensure that good information travels further than bad. We need voices that people trust, not just official ones. We need scientists who are willing to talk plainly, businesses that are willing to be honest, and communicators who are willing to challenge misinformation with patience and empathy. And we need the public, too. When you see something that sounds too shocking or too convenient to be true, pause before sharing it. Look for the source. Ask whether it comes from evidence or from anxiety. Trust is fragile. It can be damaged by a single false claim, but it can also be strengthened by a single gesture of honesty. In a world where uncertainty can spread quickly, protecting trust is one of the most important ways we can support people to make safe, informed choices about food. It is not always the most exciting work, but it is essential. Because when trust is strong, the food system works. When trust is weak, everything else becomes harder. That is why at the FSA, we are committed to being a source of clarity in a confusing world, and to working with anyone who shares that mission. Food you can trust is not just a slogan. It is a promise, and it is one we intend to keep.