FSA Board Meeting 26 March 2009

Pennington Report March 2009
Chair commended the report on the South Wales E-coli outbreak. It blamed outbreak on Mr Tudor, the butcher but Pennington made comment on FSA and MHs. Pennington enquiry response was given 19/03/09 by FSA. April open Board will discuss the content and recommendations of this most recent Pennington Report (364 pages).

Next month's meeting will concentrate on where HP states “we should have done better” focussing on what has changed since 2005. HP made 24 recommendations; only 3 directly to FSA. List will include driving up uptake of HACCP systems, approaches to regulation and enforcement improving inspection, public sector procurement, learning lessons. Embedded “lessons” into strategic plan 2010/15.

April FSA meeting will demonstrate whether steps taken since 2005, have taken place. Although HP reported to the Welsh Assembly government recommendations will be addressed UK wide.

MHS and LA enforcers must do their job properly and concluded that those businesses that are clearly outside the rules are stopped operating.

Ian Reynolds, Deputy Chair asked that the John Barr incident generated report and response, be examined to see why measures obviously failed since a repeat occurred in South Wales nine years later.

Fall out should be strengthening the enforcement regime. Chair of SFAC Graeme Millar said that the risk of such an outbreak cannot be eliminated but only minimised. “Let's hope it happens by exception.”

The report reveals alarming warnings that were ignored and it was felt that this should not happen again.

Dioxins in Irish Pork and Beef.
The Board discussed the handling of the dioxin incident. It was recommended that the devolved offices of FSA in Belfast, Aberdeen and Cardiff should be well rehearsed in what to do.

FSA UK operated initially with very little information and was difficult to manage on the weekend that FSAI advised against eating Irish Pork

Colleagues within the Agency raised concerns about the scoping group meeting which was held with industry at the beginning of the incident, the effectiveness of communication within the Agency during the course of the incident, and the respective roles of colleagues in the day to day handling of the incident.

6. These are valid points and there are clearly lessons that can be learnt from this review.

7. The Agency's Emergencies Committee will meet on 24 March to consider these comments along with the recommendations from Steelhenge, and agree an action plan to ensure that these are implemented. Both the report from Steelhenge and the Agency's response to the recommendations from the review will be published shortly.

8. In addition to the feedback received from external stakeholders as part of this review, many organisations have contacted the Agency directly and provided very complimentary feedback on our handling of the incident. This has included comments from farming organisations various manufacturers and some retailers.

9. I should also report that cattle from six beef and two beef and dairy herds in Northern Ireland are currently flagged on the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development's (DARD) Animal and Public Health Information System (APHIS) as non-compliant in relation to levels of dioxins present.

10. All eight cattle herds and associated beef are not being permitted to enter the food chain. No cattle or meat from these herds will be released into the food chain until the FSA and the EC are fully satisfied from the results that the cattle from these herds are fit to eat. The Agency is continuing to sample milk from both affected dairy herds. At present, milk from these herds is not entering the food chain.

11. In February, I also reported that an application for leave to bring proceedings for Judicial Review (JR) in respect of the actions taken by DARD and FSA in this incident was granted in the Belfast High Court. The application had been made by three of the farmers whose herds were affected by the contaminated feed. The JR hearing previously scheduled for 16 March has been rescheduled to 20 May.

The incident has raised Country of Origin labelling up the agenda.

4400 animals will be culled and incinerated with compensation agreed.

SFAC Report
Chair Graeme Millar presented SFAC's annual report and explained how SFAC meeting operated allowing comment from the floor on all topics that the committee discusses. GM claimed that SFAC was well regarded by stakeholders and had healthy engagement with Scottish government.#

It was noted that cost of the Advisory committee in Scotland was in excess of £150,000 per annum. The devolved advisory committees will be asked to examine these costs by FSA HQ.

FSAS budget for 2009/10 is £11m of which 2/3 is spent on food safety.

7. This year has been encouraging in terms of reducing foodborne disease and controlling food-related incidents. As the chart shows, after an increasing trend in previous years, provisional data for 2008 on foodborne illness from the four main foodborne pathogens appears to be showing a slight downward trend from 2007.

Laboratory-confirmed cases of gastro-intestinal and foodborne infection in Scotland for years 2006-2008 (Health Protection Scotland)

…………….2006….2007….2008
………………………..provisional………% decrease…2007 to 2008
Salmonella sp…4865….5197….4998………….4
Salmonella sp…1029….1030….1021………….1
E. coli O157….243……243…..241………….1
Listeria monocytogenes….17……23….15……35

8. Consistent with the rest of the UK, Campylobacter and Salmonella are still the two main organisms causing foodborne disease. For food-related incidents relating purely to Scotland, these a) have been infrequent and b) been primarily in the area of shellfish toxins where, for the ten contaminated consignments, effective action was taken to stop them before reaching the final consumer.

George Paterson, Director FSAS retires in June. He has been Director in Scotland from its inception in April 2000. He received a CBE for his contribution to the Agency.

Nutrient Profiling Model

A large part of the meeting was devoted to this. The implications for butchers and meat manufacturers are extremely small. Reformulation of meat products will continue to be necessary

FSA Board agreed advice to Ministers following the independent review to assess the effectiveness of the Agency's Nutrient Profiling (NP) model. The model is used by Ofcom to restrict TV advertising of 'less healthy' foods to children. It applies to all foods and drinks.

DS spoke to Norman Bagely (AIMS) who had visited Prof Hugh Pennington the previous day. Purpose of his visit was to discuss the recent report by him on the E-coli 0157 outbreak at Tudor in South Wales. He said that the MHS had recommended closure of this plant some time before the outbreak.

Chair Deirdrie Hutton had received a joint letter from British Hospitality Association, British Pub & Innkeepers and British Retail Consortium asking for reconsideration on the number of tiers proposed in the Scores on the Doors Scheme. This referred to the six tiers in England, the Scottish scheme is different and is only Pass/Fail. The Board had been contacted by the Chair via email and they see no reason to re-visit their previous decision.