EHPM has announced the death of one of the leading consultants in nutrition and food, Derek Shrimpton, at the age of 83. Dr. Shrimpton was involved in the sector for more than 25 years, having been a scientific adviser to various European and international trade organisations and the author of the first EHPM publication on maximum levels of vitamins and minerals in the early 1990s. Dr. Shrimpton was a founding member of the IADSA Scientific Group, convened in 2008 to focus on and offer solutions and recommendations for the most challenging issues in the scientific-regulatory interface regarding nutrition and supplementation. 

He began his career studying natural science in the University of Cambridge, where he specialised in biochemistry. He then spent four year as an Agricultural Research Council scholar at the Rowett Research Institute and was awarded a PhD by the University of Aberdeen. He spent 17 years at Unilever, during which time he was an honorary lecturer in the University of Nottingham.

He held positions that include: Chairman of the Agricultural Research Council working group on the microbiological assay of micronutrients; Technical Member of the Agricultural Feeds Coordination; Director General of the British Nutrition Foundation; Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Clinical Medicine at the University of Bristol; Honorary Research Fellow in the International Centre for Child Studies; Member of the Court of the University of Surrey; and member of the governing body of the National Institute for Research in Dairying at the University of Reading.