This report covers sampling and analysis carried out in 2016 for the UK-wide monitoring programmes of the environment agencies (Environment Agency, Natural Resources Wales, Northern Ireland Environment Agency and Scottish Environment Protection Agency), the Food Standards Agency and Food Standards Scotland.

It provides a detailed assessment of radioactivity in food and the environment and the public’s exposure to radiation during 2016.

The report shows that radioactivity in food is well within safe levels, and that exposure to the public from permitted discharges and direct radiation around nuclear sites remained below the legal limit.

The monitoring programmes conducted by these agencies are independent of, and also used as a check on, site operators’ programmes.

The Environment Agency consult the public on certain applications for the abstraction and impoundment of water.

These notices explain:

• what the application is about
• which Environment Agency offices you can visit to see the application documents on the public register
• when you need to comment by

This annual publication provides a round-up of statistics on food covering the economic, social and environmental aspects of the food we eat (excluding agriculture). It contains sections on:

• the food chain
• prices and expenditure
• global and UK supply

Accompanying data sets and data sources

The information in the pocketbook comes from previously published government surveys run by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra)
and a wide range of other sources including government agencies and commercial organisations. The publication carries the National Statistics logo but is a combination of National Statistics and other statistics.
Those which are National Statistics are identified as being so. Data quality varies among the many data sources and where possible an indication is included in bullet points. For more information see the data set that
accompanies each chapter of the main publication.

Data uses

Researchers put this data to a wide range of uses spanning from informing decisions on the general public’s choices through to local food policy making. It is often used for statistics on the food industry,
on food prices, on balance of diet, international comparisons and food production to supply ratio.

Next update: see the statistics release calendar

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HTML format

We’ve published this year’s food statistics pocketbook as a HTML publication. We would like your feedback on this new approach and if you think there is anything we can improve? You can contact us via email or Twitter.