Volume 1

Food safety : fourth report / Agriculture Committee.

  • Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Agriculture Committee.
Date:
1998
Catalogue details

Licence: Open Government Licence

Credit: Food safety : fourth report / Agriculture Committee. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    19/72
    epidemiology in farm livestock and its transmissibility and effects on humans. We support the call of the ACMSF’s ad hoc Working Group set up to consider the implications of the Pennington Group report that research should be carried out throughout the UK, and not just in Scotland, into the carriage and prevalence of E.coli O157 in cattle*’, This work needs to inform policy on hygienic practices in slaughterhouses, specifically in reduction of faecal contamination of carcases. Work also needs to be done to increase understanding of transmission of E.coli to humans via a wide range of foodstuffs**. (vi) cross-contamination: cross-contamination between raw and cooked meat products has been identified as a significant cause of foodborne E.coli O157 infection. For this reason the Pennington Group recommended the compulsory separation of raw and cooked meats in butchers and other premises under a licensing system®’. Professor Pennington told us that he was broadly content with the way in which these and other recommendations were being taken forward”. We concur with the conclusions of the ACMSF’s ad hoc Working Group that “the implementation of HACCP should be accelerated in high risk premises” and that an Industry Guide to Good Hygiene Practice should be developed for butchers and producers and retailers of cooked meats and cooked meat products”’. (vii) the rise in the numbers of foodborne E.coli infections in humans urgently needs to be halted and reversed. In its response to this Report, the Government should address the problem of formulating strategies against specific bacteriological hazards, as well as the detailed elements of those strategies which we have proposed. 36. The development of effective strategies against pathogenic micro-organisms in the food supply will naturally be far more detailed than the list of central concerns which we have given. As well as being informed by focused research programmes, these strategies will need to include comprehensive and well-structured surveillance schemes to record and monitor the microbiological status of foods on retail sale. Some informative data has been compiled over recent years by the PHLS, some under the EC Co-ordinated Food Control Programme and some in association with the Local Authorities Co-ordinating Body for Food and Trading Standards (LACOTS)”. Apart from repeated large-scale surveys of chickens and eggs, however, national food surveillance appears to be conducted in a relatively unscientific manner, often in the form of one-off exercises in response to particular concerns”. The PHLS also informed us that there were technical problems involved in the isolation of micro-organisms from foodstuffs, with the practical effect that “some previous surveys may have underestimated the prevalence of contaminated products”™. The establishment of a rigorous, scientific and statistically reliable national food surveillance system will be an essential component of an effective food safety policy in the future. Ideally these surveys should discriminate between foods produced according to different methods (one example amongst many would be battery and free-range eggs *) to provide information which can be used to better effect in influencing policy further down the food chain: they should also discriminate between UK- produced and imported foodstuffs. The results of such surveys must be published regularly. 87 ACMSF Annual Report 1997, p 44 ea p 410 89 The Pennington Group Report on the circumstances leading to the 1996 outbreak of infection with E.coli O157 in central Scotland, the implications for food safety and the lessons to be learned, TSO, Edinburgh, April 1997, pp 26-27 Q 1396 91 ACMSF Annual Report for 1997, p 44 92 ibid; Qq 179-180 3 ibid: Qq 179-180 4 Ev p 129 °° Q 200