Mr Edward Braxton Reynolds obituary
20 December 1940 鈥� 31 May 2023
E Braxton Reynolds died from complications from mesothelioma at 83 Heavitree Road which was both his home and laboratory. To quote one retired public analyst “A singular individual in many ways, but with sufficient endearing traits to remain much respected.”
On leaving school, he read Chemistry at University College in London and left with what he described as “a very undistinguished degree” having not been enthused by the lecturers who “wanted the chemistry to be pure and not applied”. On graduating he “went to work for Donald Moir of Moir and Palgrave, Public Analysts for Surrey at Southwark Street, close also to the laboratories of Amphlett Williams, Public Analyst for the City of London in the Kings Head Yard. Donald Moir trained me, just as Thomas Tickle and my father had trained Donald Moir in the laboratory in Exeter in the late 1920s and early 1930s, and that training, just like pupillage for barristers, was invaluable.” He passed his MChemA at the first attempt in 1973 and almost immediately took over from his father Dr Cedric Victor Reynolds as senior partner in Tickle and Reynolds and was appointed public and agricultural analyst for Devon, Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly.
He delighted in classical methods and would employ them, where appropriate, in preference to more involved instrumental techniques. Why go through an extensive extraction and clean-up followed an instrumental finish on a sample to quantify a non-permitted sweetener which is almost certainly absent when a quick yet sensitive qualitative test will confirm this? “No analysis should ever be an ego trip for an analyst, the analyst provides information, upon which substantive decisions safely may be based”. At one time he equipped a mobile laboratory with a packed column GC to be able to provide a rapid analysis service for the active ingredients in sheep dip being used on the moors. Samples would arrive by motorcycle courier; analysis would be carried out immediately with little sample preparation and the courier would leave with a completed certificate of analysis.
He was chair of the Scientific Affairs Committee of the Association of Public Analysts (APA) for many years and represented the Association on British Standards Institution (BSI) meetings on issues of foods, food additives, food packaging, toys and consumer durables, attending Food and Agriculture Organisation/World Health Organisation (FAO/WHO) meetings on international standards, including the Codex Committee for Methods of Analysis and Sampling (1992 to 2004), helping to speed up the importation and exportation of perishable foods. He also led on sweeteners in food, raising concerns about the additives widely used outside of Europe.
His Presidency of the APA (1998-2000) came in the wake of the James Report calling for the establishment of an independent Food Standards Agency in 1997. He made a major contribution to the Association’s submission to the Turner Review of the Public Analyst Provision in England and Wales (published in October 1998). When he appeared before the House of Commons Committee on Food Standards on 15 March 1999 with Vice President Bob Stevens he offered “something of the order of 66 questions which it might very well be that this Committee would find of use” in its deliberations. During his Presidency APA council meetings were “guaranteed to be entertaining, though they hardly ever finished on time”.
He held the position of Vice President of the Analytical Division Council of the RSC from 1999-2002. With Norman Michie he was one of two public analysts on the original Food Analysis Performance Assessment Scheme (FAPAS) advisory committee, serving from 1989 to 2001. FAPAS was set up by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food to offer a range of external proficiency samples to public analyst laboratories to provide assurance that official analysis of food and feed was fit for enforcement purposes. At the time FAPAS was then both new and exciting with continuous development. Braxton’s encyclopaedic theoretical and practical knowledge of analytical chemistry was invaluable to the scheme as it developed. Fapas now sends hundreds of proficiency tests a year to thousands of laboratories across all continents of the world, except Antarctica.
His 1999 conference (APA’99) on the theme of integrated public protection was held at a time when there were 31 public analyst laboratories in the UK (9 in 2023), the Food Standards Act 1999 and the Local Government Act 1999 were not yet on the statute book. Presentations covered the role of public analysts in inspecting food businesses, the needs of enforcement officers, the Food Standards Agency, the need for a national sample database, best value, continuing professional competence and unused evidential material.
Reduced local authority spending on sampling and analysis, particularly of animal feeds, during the early years of the century together with the increasing demands of accreditation eventually resulted in Braxton relinquishing his appointments, though he continued to act as an expert witness, particularly in drink driving cases for a number of years.
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