The very highest honour which our profession can offer is the highest which the Council of the Institute can confer, the Honorary Fellowship of the Institute. Not usually at a loss for words, I still have difficulty, 2½ years after receiving it, in finding words to express my deep appreciation and gratitude.

    Traditionally, a new Honorary Fellow is expected to give an Honorary Fellow's Address, and one's first thought is to try to offer a retrospect of one' s career involvement with food science and technology, and to distil from it some profound thoughts. Well, a career retrospect may be appropriate when one's career has been completed; at this stage it would merely be presumptuous, for I sincerely hope that my career is far from completed. Of my career, I shall only say that, although we all appear to be the victims of that ancient Chinese curse – "May you live in interesting times" – I count myself very fortunate to have lived and worked through the period in which the former application of individual scientific disciplines to food became integrated into something that could properly be called "food science", and during which a new profession was created and doubly fortunate in having been able to be there and involved in its creation and throughout its subsequent development. I also count myself lucky to have had over the years the opportunities of involvement in and responsibility for so many aspects of food science and technology; in research, in product development, in production management and in food control; through working successively for four large and highly diversified companies, involvement in a wide variety of technologies and an even wider variety of end products; and, in the last five years, the exciting, fascinating and rewarding life of a consultant.

    As for profound thoughts, I would appear to have pre-empted myself. Over the years, and particularly from 1970 when I became Honorary Secretary of the Institute, I have been thinking and speaking and writing fairly prolifically, and as profoundly as I know how, about food science and technology, about our profession and about our Institute. A paper given in 1977, "A Professional Philosophy for Food Science & Technology?" has been, in abridged pamphlet form, and still is in a recently revised and updated version, a part of the "kit" that new members of the Institute receive. More particularly, when I had the great privilege of serving the Institute as President in 1979 and 1980, I gave the Presidential Address 'Food and the Public Interest: A Professional Responsibility" on ten occasions at different centres; the opening address " The Philosophy of Food Control" at the Guildford Summer Symposium in 1979; and the opening address "Prudence, Precautions and Research" at the Cambridge Summer Symposium in 1980. Thereafter, the first paper "The Food Technologist in the UK" at the Sutton Bonington Summer Symposium in 1981, and a paper on "Building Credibility Bridges" at the UKCFST Symposium in 1981.

    My thoughts and views and philosophy have not changed. If I attempted to give them now I should simply be duplicating what has already appeared in print.

    What then should I choose for my Honorary Fellow's Address? It occurred to me that as I have had a continuing and never-waning love affair with food science and technology for the past 39 years, I might be qualified to say a few things about the pleasures and satisfactions that food science and technology can provide - a permissible form of "kiss and tell''.

To Satisfy and Nourish

    The primary functions of food are to satisfy and nourish. Those functions can be fulfilled only when there is enough With only rare exceptions, our population here is part of the world's privileged minority, where enough - and sometimes too much - is taken for granted The problems of an adequate food supply for the great majority of our fellow human beings who go short, problems linked with poverty and compounded by natural and man-made disasters, are not merely technical problems but political, economic, ecological cultural and social problems. They will not be solved by food science and technology alone; but they will not be solved without food science and technology.

    It is mainly in our universities, research institutes and among those involved in work for international agencies that direct opportunities occur to contribute to the science and technology of third world food problems. Such work is doubly satisfying, not only to those who may benefit from it but also to those who have the opportunity to apply their professional expertise in this way.

    There are many in our profession, like myself, whose daily work is concerned wholly with research, or product development or production or food control in relation to food products for UK consumers or for other well-fed consumer populations abroad, and making no direct working contribution to the solution of third world food problems, yet we may feel a warm glow in supporting and cheering on the efforts of our professional colleagues who can make direct working contributions.

Enjoyment and Wholesomeness

    Food is indeed an essential fuel for the human machine, but it is of course much more than that. It is to satisfy the body, the senses and the mind - and if it fails to satisfy the senses and the mind it will not nourish the body because it will not be eaten. The vital and indispensable role of food science and technology in enabling consumers to choose nutritious diets made up of foods which they like and can afford, from among a wide range of foods which are attractive, appetising, safe and wholesome, renders our profession a noble and honourable one which serves and serves well the public interest and the most basic need of the community, and provides its practitioners with satisfaction and pride in knowing that to be the case. More than that, however, the various professional activities involved themselves provide their own special satisfactions and pleasures to those engaged in them.

The Joys of Research

    Food research, like most human activities, has its stretches of repetitious and even boring routine, but it also offers the joys of successfully meeting a challenge, of finding valuable answers to previously unanswerable questions, indeed of gaining knowledge which enables previously unaskable questions to be asked, and generally of advancing a small (or a large) sector of the frontier of knowledge and understanding. In March 1974, John Hawthorn, who was then President and subsequently to become a Honorary Fellow himself in 1980, speaking about a then newly-made Honorary Fellow, Jerry Tilgner, expressed something of the spirit of these joys of research by quoting the poet James Elroy Flecker

  "We are the pilgrims, Master
   We shall go - always a little further 
   It may be that beyond that last blue mountain barred with snow,
   Across that angry or that glittering sea, 
   White in a cave or guarded on a throne
   There lives a prophet who can understand
   Why men were born.
   But surely we are brave,
   Who take the Golden Road to Samarkand.
   We travel not for trafficking alone
    By hotter winds our fiery hearts are fanned.
   For lust of knowing what should not be known, 
   We take the Golden Road to Samarkand".

    In my book, however, the greatest research joy of all, the "peak experience", is not successful completion, but rather that moment when you perceive - more often than not, quite suddenly - the pathway that will lead to a successful completion. It may happen through recognising that a collection of data or observations fall into a hitherto unrecognised pattern, giving rise to a feeling almost akin to creating order out of chaos. Or it may happen, even more exhilaratingly, at a point when there seems to be a gap in the normally accepted sequence of scientific thought and induction; and to cross that gap the researcher's mind has to make what the late Jacob Bronowski referred to as "an intuitive leap". Either way, it manifests itself as the sort of personal experience which I have referred to elsewhere as " a flash of insight".

    For academic researchers there is the additional satisfaction of the recognition resulting from publication and subsequent citation; though perhaps for them, more important than the personal satisfaction is the vital role which publications play in academic career advancement. As one whose familiarity with the post-war higher academic world has been from the outside looking in, it is not for me to judge whether or not sheer volume of publications plays relatively too great a part there. It is perhaps as well that career advancement for researchers in industry depends on other criteria, because in most instances company confidentiality precludes publication. This can lead to history being unknowingly repeated, accompanied by wry smiles from those meriting but unable to claim prior recognition. I am reminded of the publication a few years ago of a paper from a world-famous overseas government research establishment, reporting, as new findings, work that, unbeknown to the authors, virtually reproduced work which an industrial team of which I was a part had not only carried out but applied and translated into an effectively operating industrial process a quarter of a century earlier - but which of course had never been published. I happen to know about that instance because of my own involvement, but I cannot help suspecting that it is a not uncommon occurrence

Brain-Children on the Shelves

Product and process development come in many shapes and sizes, and with varying degrees of innovation. Certainly the more innovative developments provide much the same exhilarations and satisfactions as do major research projects.

    But development does provide an especial exhilaration all of its own - that of seeing the resulting product actually on the supermarket shelves, being bought and bought again by the public. It's almost like seeing one's children succeed in the wide world.

The Challenge of "Getting it Right"

If I have referred to research and development before mentioning food control, it is merely to recognise the chronological sequence of knowledge - design - implementation, and in no way to signal an order of importance. Having in my time been involved in all three, I would assert categorically that the knowledge, intellect, skill, mental agility and organisational ability required in devising, organizing and operating systems to ensure that the product consistently accords with the design, are every bit as great as in carrying out research or development, every bit as demanding of top-notch people and resources, and of board-level representation. For the most part and for reasons which are understandable but not justifiable, food control, like technical control of quality and design implementation in industry generally, has for too long been something of a poor relation, to the disadvantage of industry and customers alike, and to our detriment as an industrial nation.

    One of the most far-sighted actions ever taken by our Institute was its initiative in developing the Mastership in Food Control, which will, among other valuable consequences, help to upgrade both the status and the practice of food control.

    Like research and development food control has its pedestrian moments - but also like them it has its challenges, its "peak experiences", its exhilaration and its satisfactions.

    Effective industrial food control, providing the necessary continuous scientific and technical input to help production management and personnel to "get it right first time", is of course half of Good Manufacturing Practice. The other half is the effective design, organization, management and implementation of the manufacturing operation itself.

    In transport, in addition to tests on the condition of vehicles, and the policing and enforcement of traffic regulations, the law requires that drivers must have passed a test to show that they have a basic knowledge of the rules and some skill in driving, with more stringent requirements for driving a bus and still more stringent ones for piloting an aircraft for each purpose, an appropriate demonstrated competence.

The health, safety and wellbeing of the public likewise requires that the proprietor of any food business, or at least one person responsible to him, possesses appropriate demonstrated competence. In food businesses other than factory-scale manufacture, this should take the form of a suitable and relatively simple test of knowledge of applicable Regulations and of what to do and how to go about it in order to comply with them, on similar lines to the test now being developed in USA under FDA-auspices for catering managers. In factory-scale manufacture or importing. however, the requirement should be that at least one responsible person possesses considerable scientific, technological and technico-legal knowledge, plus significant experience of in-factory food control, i e what amounts to the concept of "the qualified person". Where this is already a legal necessity, for example in the manufacture of pharmaceutical products, a ''qualified person" is one who has a formal academic or professional qualification in a relevant scientific discipline, and who can produce evidence of adequate knowledge of the subjects listed in an approved Study Guide, and who has had at least two years of practical experience in quality assurance in a manufacturing undertaking in the field concerned a pattern highly suitable for the food manufacturing field in general. A qualification in food science or food technology would cover all the knowledge required; a qualification in a contributory discipline (e g chemistry or biology) would require supplementation by evidence of having studied topics not covered in that discipline. The Mastership in Food Control would cover not only all the knowledge required, but also more than the requisite experience. However, as is normally the case when a requirement for a '' qualified person" is established in a given field, appropriate provision should be made for persons effectively " in post" or who fulfil certain specified criteria at the time of coming into force.

"A Fellowship with Essence"

  Everyone knows that a thing of beauty is a joy for ever; but few, apart from the compilers of dictionaries of quotations, know that in the same poem, "Endymion", John Keats described not only beauty, but also happiness - and in a way which is particularly apt for us.

   "Wherein lies happiness? In that which becks 
   Our ready minds to fellowship divine. A fellowship with essence."

    " A fellowship with essence". My mind goes back to the occasion of the 10th Anniversary Dinner of the Institute in March 1974, when our Founder President and first Honorary Fellow, Professor Denis Mounfield, presented to the Institute the President's Jewel which John Hawthorn was the first President to wear, and which has been handed on by each President to his successor. In presenting it, Denis Mounfield spoke of his gratitude for the happiness he had gained from his involvement in the Institute, a gratitude which I now echo. In proposing the toast to the Institute on the same occasion, Denis spoke some words which I also echo now and which I believe will be echoed by everyone who has been actively involved in the life and activities of the Institute in any way –

   "I'm going to suggest that the Institute has achieved something which  it did not specifically set out to do in the beginning. By the process of serendipity - which I am sure is well-known to all of you - it has found that, in seeking the goal of formal professional recognition, it has found an informal warm community of minds, and surely thereby a better quality of life for all its members".

    It would be difficult to better that and I shall not try. It was around that time, in the latter part of my five years as Honorary Secretary of the Institute, that I started my now well-known - or should I say notorious - activities with cassette recorder and camera at important Institute events. I only wish I had thought of doing so earlier. I had a sense that in the early period of the Institute we were living through - indeed we were making - history, maybe not world-shaking history but sufficiently important within the field of food science and technology that members of the Institute in the future might be interested to research the early records. I was spurred on by John Hawthorn's response when thanking the Founder President for the President's Jewel, in the course of which he said

   "I think of those who follow after us years hence; and perhaps a hundred years from this night, to the very day, there may well be some curious person who looks at the President's Jewel and who searches back the records – and believe me, if Ralph has anything to do with it the records will be there and intact – and looks at this and remembers the days that we're now in, and wonders what kind of  people we were at the beginning of this Institute."

    Well, if anyone does so, he or she will not only be able to search through the written records, they will be able to see a photograph of John Hawthorn saying that and hear his voice saying it. The Institute Office houses albums of prints made from the original transparencies, but it has sometimes been suggested to me that I ought to put on a film show of all my IFST slides for Institute members, perhaps as the centre-piece of a social evening Well, the whole collection would occupy far more than an evening and tax far more patience that even food scientists and technologists are well-known to possess; but if members have the time and inclination, I should be happy to provide a slide show of a small selection on a suitable occasion. Meanwhile perhaps I might now interpose just a few pictures of a few of the wonderful people and happy occasions I have been fortunate to enjoy and record (or, in 1979 and 1980, when I was otherwise engaged as President, were recorded with my camera by others).

True Happiness

    Food scientists and technologists are necessarily keen observers, and will have noticed thus far an apparent breach of the Trade Descriptions Act 1968. I have talked of happiness, but the title of my Address was "True Happiness". Let me conclude therefore by ensuring that the Trade Descriptions Act 1968 be not breached. In 1938, Helen Keller wrote one of the shortest and simplest yet one of the most profound statements of a personal philosophy –

   "True happiness is not attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy cause".

    Having been continuously and very actively involved in helping to lead the Institute ever since its inception in February 1962, I can testify to the validity of that statement and its relevance to IFST. The cause which our profession and its professional Institute exist to serve is a worthy and honourable one. So when, as sometimes happens, people comment to me or even commend me for the amount of my time and effort that I devote to the Institute, I can honestly say that for me it has been and is a labour of love and a source of true happiness Apart from the Institute itself. that truth is perhaps the most important single thing that I and the other older members whose enthusiasm and dedication helped to create and build the Institute can bequeath to our younger professional colleagues who will have to pick up the torch and in their turn carry the Institute forward.