Typically, there are four sectors involved in generating, compiling, disseminating, and/or using food composition data. They are health, agriculture, environment, and trade. Historically, agriculture has been the dominant sector involved in food composition research and service. This is demonstrated most clearly in countries and international agencies with the longest history of formal food composition activities; for example, the United States, where responsibility for food composition data lies with the United States Department of Agriculture. Nevertheless, most of the participants in food composition conferences, and most of the researchers publishing food composition papers and books, are health sector professionals. Indeed, in New Zealand, it is the health sector that provides 70% of the funding for the work and constitutes 80% of the users of the information.
Involvement of the environment sector is becoming increasingly important as it relates to the composition of native foods for endangered or protected animal species and the composition of indigenous plants as an ecological resource in their own right. Research opportunities are plentiful in this food composition niche. Trade has also gained more dominance in recent years and many food composition research laboratories are supplementing their science with analytical services to the food industry.
Food security, a relatively new term that is loaded with implication, is the single issue that impinges on all four sectors, presenting the urgency of food composition activities. Almost every country in the world is signatory to the Rome Declaration on World Food Security and World Food Summit Plan of Action (http://www.fao.org/wfs/final/rd-e.htm). A national food composition program is fundamental to a country's obligation "of taking action now to fulfil our responsibility to achieve food security for present and future generations."
There are reasons why each country, or at least like groupings of countries, require their own food composition data, and their own national, or at least regional, food composition programs: