Trade union Prospect has said the Institute for Food Research (IFR) should be "embedded" within the University of East Anglia, rather than merged, to preserve the IFR's internal research capacity.
The Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council announced last week that the institute was to become "more closely" integrated with the UEA but deferred until December a decision whether to transfer all the assets of the IFR to UEA.
"Transfer would be a fundamentally bad decision for British science and for public health ... We would see the break-up of world-class teams and loss of the independence," said Nigel Titchen, president of Prospect's science, engineering and technology group.