By Dr Sian Thomas, Head of Information Management, Food Standards Agency

The Food Standards Agency is delighted to be a silver sponsor of Open Data Camp 4 in Cardiff – 25-26th February 2017.  Our involvement with Open Data Camp started at the first camp in Winchester, and following our re-affirmation of our Open Data commitment in January 2016 we were pleased to sponsor the Bristol Camp last May.

The FSA has an office in Cardiff, so I thought it might be interesting to pull out a couple of food facts which can be found in our open data.  Food and You – the Agency’s consumer survey which has been carried out in 2010, 2012 and 2014 (still waiting for 2016 results) showed that Women in Wales aged between 40 and 45 were the demographic group most likely to comply with recommended food safety practices. With Welsh roots myself, in my house we call this the ‘Mam effect’.  Comparisons across countries from this survey showed significant differences across a number of areas.

Wales also was the first country to make displaying a Food Hygiene Ratings Scheme (FHRS) Score mandatory.  Of course, FHRS is our most well used dataset and we are in the process of changing the licensing arrangements for this data to Open Government License.

We look forward to engaging in food and open data discussions at camp.  If you have an interest in food open data too, do seek us out or think about jointly pitching a session.  And if you are unable to attend – watch out for @foodgov tweeters on the #ODcamp hashtag.