Expert Committee on Pesticide Residues in Food (PRiF)

The Expert Committee on Pesticide Residues in Food (PRiF) provides independent advice to the government on the monitoring of pesticide residues in food.

The Expert Committee on Pesticide Residues in Food (PRiF) provides independent advice to the government on how to plan and deliver monitoring programmes for pesticide residues in the food supply in both Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Specifically, the role of the committee is to provide independent advice to ministers on:

  • presenting results from monitoring programmes - in particular to ensure that results can be easily understood by the public 
  • planning monitoring programmes - in particular, advising on which foods to survey, availability of produce, location and frequency of sampling and pesticides to test for 
  • determining the likely causes of adverse findings detected

In carrying out its role, the committee will: 

  • make its scientific advice and views available to the public and other interested parties in a way which aims to be comprehensive, clear and timely 
  • report to Defra’s Chief Scientific Adviser
  • operate in line with the government’s Principles for Scientific Advice and the Code of Practice for Scientific Advisory Committees

The Secretariat is provided by the Health and Safety Executive.

All committee papers from before October 2015 are available on the National Archives website.

Terms of Reference

The PRiF terms of reference (PDF, 193 KB, 14 pages) are set by ministers.

Membership

The committee currently consists of the following members:

  • Ann Davison (Chair) - Co-founder of Fairtrade Foundation, set up and served on Transatlantic Consumers Dialogue
  • Dr Jonathan Blackman - Horticultural technical manager at H L Hutchinson Ltd
  • Ian Finlayson – Consultant on food safety, sustainability and ethical production
  • John Points – Consultant providing advice to food retailers and producers on chemical risk assessment, analytical testing and the interpretation of results
  • Debbie Winstanley - Debbie is a public interest member of the committee, an agronomist with commercial experience in the UK food supply chain and who works with charities supporting good farming practice and biodiversity

Full details can be found in our PRiF members' biographies and declarations of interests (PDF, 135 KB, 4 pages).

Results of monitoring programme

The government regularly publishes the results of the monitoring of UK grown and imported food to check for any pesticide residues. These monitoring results are reviewed by the committee.

Meetings

Meetings are generally closed to the public. We aim to publish the agenda shortly before each meeting, and we publish minutes of meetings alongside the quarterly report that was discussed at the meeting.

Minutes and papers

Earlier committee papers are available on the National Archives website.

Upcoming meetings:

  • 29 January 2025
  • 14 May 2025
  • 16 July 2025
  • 15 October 2025
  • 28 January 2026
  • 13 May 2026

Annual report

We publish an annual report summarising the work of the committee:

Contact details

prif@hse.gov.uk

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