The food we consume is poorly optimized for human or planetary health. This is a growing and global challenge. The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Food System Trials Initiative has been established to fund research that will find ways to tackle this challenge through food system change. The initiative recognises that much of the change will need to be brought about by commercial organisations in the food system, as well as other agencies, including public and third sector. The SALIENT Consortium has been funded by ESRC as part of a UKRI cross-council initiative, and aims to work with food system stakeholders across many sectors.

Working with stakeholders in other sectors can present a number of challenges for university researchers. Other sectors differ from academia in their fundamental aims (e.g. generation of profit vs generation of knowledge). This misalignment of purpose can create challenges when disparate groups collaborate on research (White et al., 2020), leading to conflicts of interest. It is also well-documented that some organisations engage in unethical tactics in attempts to influence research outcomes and public policy (Chavez-Ugalde et al., 2021). Any interaction between researchers and other (non-academic) stakeholders therefore needs careful consideration. There is significant potential for scientific integrity to be undermined directly, as well as the risk of reputational damage by association. Such risks can erode the credibility of research and researchers and adversely affect the trust that the public and policymakers have in researchers, and leads to growing scepticism of published research (Cullerton et al., 2024).

Nevertheless, interacting with external stakeholders will be necessary to achieve food system transformation and is essential for the successful delivery of SALIENT Consortium research. To ensure that our research can take place without adverse impacts on research integrity or risk of reputational damage, safeguards will be needed.

The SALIENT research project is entirely funded by a UKRI research grant administered by the ESRC. The research project does not receive any funding from the food industry or other food stakeholders. However, to conduct our projects we will work with partners from the food industry and other stakeholders, both to co-design interventions and to host our research projects. We reimburse all our partners for expenses incurred in developing and delivering our research trials.

To further support transparency within the SALIENT consortium, we have a policy that all of the research team must declare all potential conflicts of interest related to the project. Each consortium member has completed a declaration of interest. These declaration of interest statements were made in March 2024. They can be requested by submitting an email to Trisha Gordon (trisha.gordon@ndph.ox.ac.uk).