Dr Patrick Wall was the right man at the right time, writes Dick Ahlstrom, Science Editor
Irish consumers lose a powerful friend and advocate with the departure of Dr Patrick Wall as chief executive of the Food Safety Authority of Ireland. Alert to all the issues and afraid of no one, he championed consumer concerns during some of the worst safety scares to rock the food industry here and in Europe.
He presided at the FSAI when BSE hit the news, was there through the foot-and-mouth outbreak and when people began to worry about deaths from food-borne E.coli 0157. He was a source of sensible comment while people fretted about genetically modified foods and provided good advice through several dioxin and other chemical scares.
He became the scourge of careless food-producers who either failed or refused to clean up their premises. He laid down the law and in the past two years had begun to name-and-shame them so consumers could remember their names.
Dr Wall was uniquely qualified to hold this post, which combines a regulatory responsibility for food sourcing and production but also a public awareness dimension. He holds a veterinary degree, but he is also a medical consultant. Knowledge of the two areas provided him a unique view of where our food comes from and the impact it can have on public health.
Before arriving here he was consultant in charge of the gastro-intestinal diseases section of the British National Communicable Disease Surveillance Centre, where he developed a reputation for tracing the source of foodborne infections no matter where they arose in the world.
It was unusual for an Irishman to head such a group, and getting Dr Wall to return to Ireland to become the first chief executive of the new Food Safety Authority five years ago was rightly considered something of a coup.
The Republic was forward-thinking in establishing the FSAI, but its success was going to be predicated on getting someone with the expertise and the drive to make it work. Dr Wall had an immediate impact, differentiating the FSAI as a body with the consumers' interests in mind, rather than those of the food-producing industry.
First and foremost he made the public more aware of the importance, and indeed the vital necessity, of food safety. There were growing indications that food safety could be a matter of life and death, whether, for example, in the form of E.coli O157 or vCJD.
He argued that it was impossible to police the entire industry and so he cajoled the public into taking responsibility for their own food safety. He encouraged consumers to say No to shoddy practices and improper handling and to vote with their feet when it came to safe food.
He developed the authority from its initial embryonic stages, coaxing it along to become the powerful body it is today. A key achievement was his co-ordination of food safety inspections, streamlining these despite the involvement of a collection of State bodies and organisations.
As Dr Wall pursued his role he was cowed neither by ministers nor politicians pleading for special interest groups. He did what was correct rather than what was politic, yet remained a canny operator in a highly politicised and economically powerful sector.
This did not prevent him rowing with the Department of Agriculture over BSE. He argued strongly that BSE was a health protection issue rather than a market protection issue. He advocated that older animals only be slaughtered to prevent human disease, but the Government opted instead for a wider slaughter-out approach that helped assuage concerns of the export markets.
He also saw a major part of his public awareness role move across to the Food Safety Promotions Board. Given that this was a North-South body he could hardly lobby against the decision and accepted the change, although others might argue that the food safety message may not be as co-ordinated with two agencies on the playing pitch.