Meat Hygiene Policy Forum 18th Meeting: May 2009

Liz Redmond chaired the meeting having been appointed as the Agency's new Veterinary Director. She joined the Agency in December from the post of Director of Animal Health and Welfare Policy at the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (DARD) in Northern Ireland.

Liz gave an update on FSA restructuring. The Veterinary and Meat Hygiene Division was now part of a much larger Hygiene and Microbiology Division. Alison Gleadle would deal with other contaminants as Head of Enforcement, Science and Policy Division and Sarah Appleby would be in charge of Implementation and Delivery (other than MHS) dealing primarily at local authority level. LR said that there would be “an eye on consistency between bodies who deliver.”

Jo Head reported on the Joint Red Meat and White Meat Group meeting of 12th February. She said that they were keen to revise red meat and white meat industry guides to align them with the transformation of meat inspection. It was agreed that criteria is required to treat persistent non-compliant plants. Port mortem inspection effectiveness had been scrutinised. Levels of abnormality discovered were around 9% in pigs, slightly less than 9% in sheep, less than 1% in cattle. This was a base line survey to allow further work that would hopefully lead to potential visual inspection of animals post mortem. 30% of FBOs have been in participation with the OV.

The Meat Hygiene Service is reportedly adopting Meriel's off the shelf software. Plants not using the Meriel system appear to be experiencing difficulties. Red meat inspection training was likely to take advantage of the positive PIA route. Improve have set up a group with industry, Association of Meat Inspectors, awarding bodies to review standards with the aim being for plant staff to be used before MHS inspection. Training would be modular to bring together a qualification for pre-inspection. The 2004 EU regulation allows this with a transitional measure delayed until the end of 2009. In 2008 new regulations agreed parity of inspection training but limited that to specific species sectors.

It was said that the value of food chain information to the industry was small and that there had been very few requests for data from those records.

Food Chain Information (FCI) becomes a legal requirement for cattle and sheep from 01/01/2010. A stakeholder meeting and workshop to consider the implementation of Food Chain Information for cattle and sheep was held in Newcastle on 2 April 2009.

Conclusions from that meeting were:-
Consideration should be given to providing FCI on an exception reporting basis.
Producers must be made fully aware of their implicit recognition of compliance with public health requirements when sending animals for slaughter
The use of electronic systems for recording animal movements in general and provision of FCI in particular should be encouraged
Use should be made of existing identification and movement documents as far as possible to provide FCI
The role of farm assurance schemes in the provision of FCI should be investigated.
Implementation of FCI for sheep is dependent on effective identification and traceability: FSA should clarify traceability requirements for food safety purposes
Industry is best placed to solve the data protection issues relating to the provision of historical inspection results to slaughterhouse FBOs.

The forum considered the ecoli inquiry report by Hugh Pennington. In it he made 24 recommendations three directed at FSA including support for training and information EHOs.

Themes
FSA see six main themes emerging on which outcomes will be set and measured:
• uptake of HACCP based procedures by FBOs;
• knowledge, training and skills of enforcement officials;
• consistent and appropriate risk based enforcement;
• audit and monitoring of enforcement;
• evaluation to ensure programme objectives of securing public health
protection are met; and
• improving our understanding of the science.

The forum was then split into three working groups to discuss what can you do to change the food safety culture in your home/shop/production premises/farm or within your industry sector? The three groups reported back:

1 Need for thorough review of enforcement policy – those present were horrified and dismayed and felt that inspection should have been more rigorous and more effective. Facilities supplying mass catering ready to eat should meet far tighter standards than appears to be the case. The system should incentivise good practice; if the threat of stepping outside good food safety standards was greater it would be a better deterrent. Large companies supply major retailers already operate to good standards and these need to get more emphasis to other suppliers. More education opportunities from enforcement authorities to understand the technicalities of the food industry were advised.

2 Industry could do only a limited number of things and need to work with FSA and EHOs. Industry reminded FSA that it does not have control over enforcement. It was felt that EHOs worked on limited resources. Group 2 advised better audit of FSA and MHS. They felt that whistle blowing was not effective since EHOs lacked resources to follow up cases. The driver needs to be central government. It was questioned if training was appropriately focused and even more so was it properly implemented. Reputable businesses do try to do things right and it was felt that there was a need to address FBOs who may below the radar. Public procurement regimes need to balance cost, quality and food safety. FBOs who cut costs win contracts for the wrong reasons. Whilst it was felt that a scores on the doors system helped consumers make choices such a scheme did not help areas such as school meals and residential homes where there was no choice. It was noted that trade associations were willing to collaborate with FSA to highlight areas that could be improved.

3 To get the message across to FBOs there needs to be face to face intervention if a change of attitude was to be achieved case studies of best practice should be used to improve industry standards.

David Hart spoke on the MHS charging proposals that would see movement towards time based charging and an increase of 4%. The charge for removal of SRM to recover 5% of costs had not been recommended by the FSA Board that met on the 21st April. Ministerial agreement is required for the MHS proposals to come into force on the 29th June.

Milorad Radakovic reported on the FVO mission to England and Wales last week looking at red meat and milk only. This involved slaughterhouses, cutting plants through to cold stores. They reported some improvement in the approval process but expressed concerns over issues on beef labelling and traceability. Some premises visited did not fair well and he instanced mingling of outdoor and indoor clothing, general cleanliness, reality was not what was on paper, inadequate wrapping and packaging some of which required immediate action. Age of mincing will be an FVO non-compliance. Liz Redmond commented that this links with the Pennington report and the need for more consistent regulation.

Trichinella
The UK is required to test all pigs for Trichinella. Prior to 2006 they were tested but fattened pigs are not tested. UK can be recognised as a region with “negligible risk” but need to show EU that there is no Trichinella. There is a problem because there is not enough outdoor pigs tested to get derogation for indoor pigs. A way must be found to test more outdoor pigs for Trichinella and FSA need industries help to identify where there are outdoor pigs for testing. The lest favoured alternative will be testing of all pigs. There is an intention to form a working group of key industry operators.

Paul Holley and David Carruthers updated the meeting on SRM/BSE controls the FSA board had agreed to move to more risk based controls in relation to supervision, not the controls themselves. This was agreed subject to advice from chief medical officers and subject to continual monitoring and low levels of BSE. More responsibility now falls on to FBOs. David Carruthers explained that the FSA board had debated how industry could insure that standards would not drop. Stuart Roberts (BMPA) said that this was “a blooming insult”. He felt that industry had proved that responsibility and plays its full part. He felt it was unnecessary criticism and it was supported by Norman Bagley. Liz Redmond replied that the board wanted industry commitment demonstrated and asked to put such on record with evidence. She concluded “do not let this lie”.
DS asked when FSA would review the decision not to allow removal of vertebral column in butchers shops since the science presented to the stakeholder group in November had supported this. PH replied that a risk assessment would be put to the EU in the next couple of months. He warned that an audit on removal of VC in 24 to 30 month cattle had revealed a poor record of compliance.

Joana Fullick reported on the Meat Hygiene Advisory Body that concentrates on H3 issues under “delivery and official controls”. She reported that priority would be given to changing requirements for VC removal on the EU stage. FSA wanted to present a more persuasive argument.

The Advisory body had urged that rather than permitting the removal of VC SRM in butchers shops, priority be given to gathering the scientific evidence and support for increasing the SRM Vertebral column age from 30 to 48 months, in line with the BSE testage.

Future of MHPF
Liz Redmond said that by the time of the next meeting, she would like to re examine the way stakeholders are engaged. She was concerned that there was such a no show rate when meeting are only held six monthly. She would like to discover the reasons for this. The meeting observed that the pre meeting e mail debate about changing the date had given the impression that the agenda would be light and might have put potential attendees off. It was expressed from the floor that if you were not on an Advisory or Sector working group that this was the only opportunity to meet.

Next Meeting: Provisionally set for Wednesday 18th November.