back to menuThe meeting was chaired by Baroness Hayman who described herself as "the Food Standards Minister". Among the Panel Members present were Sue Payne, Phyl Sluce and Dorothy Craig. The room was full with about sixty people eagerly awaiting the committee's deliberations.
The Bill has gone through its committee and House of Lords stages and the Royal Assent is expected before Nov. 17th. The appointment of staff is in the hands of the Department of Health. Several people emphasised how important it will be that the FSA sends out regular Bulletins. We were told that first class communication is a high priority, both with Bulletins, the Helpline and the web site.
May Kidd, a farmer herself, had asked members of the Scottish Consumer Council Consumer Network what three issues gave them most concern about food safety, and why? Half of them said "Food Hygiene Standards, both of food suppliers such as shops and restaurants, and in the home". The safety of GM foods worried 40% of the respondents. It was lack of knowledge that caused most concern. Many were worried about the presence of too many chemicals, pesticides and additives. There were a number of other concerns. BSE was quite low down the list.
Discussion took place about school education in food hygiene/handling. The FSA was urged to make food hygiene its top launch priority. The Consumer Panel frequently talks to the Department of Education about its concerns. Dorothy Craig has heard that David Blunkett was considering introducing food hygiene into the school curriculum.
Nobody was able to explain satisfactorily why supermarkets had not followed the well established colour coding of the doorstep delivery dairies. One explanation (from Somerfield) was that it was impossible to print gold on cartons. An illustration of the sort of problems that arise - green coded doorstep milk is unpasteurised but in supermarkets green signifies semi-skimmed milk. Confusion could be serious for some people.
A MAFF official gave the figure for delivered milk as 30% of the market and declining. This was bad news for those housebound or too busy to shop. There was discussion about the keeping qualities of supermarket milk compared with delivered. Pat Heron told about Exeter Group's campaign to get supermarkets to adopt a standard system and Plymouth Group's similar efforts were also mentioned. They were eventually successful! Ideas about date-stamping bottle tops were discussed.
The meeting agreed that all was not lost and an approach should be made to try to get the supermarkets to adopt the system used by the National Dairymen's Association, or at least talk to them about it.
MAFF had submitted a paper which did not try to hide how serious the problem had been and showed that it was still with us though diminishing. Dr. John Godfrey explained that incidents of CJD happened to people with only one of three gene types. It was not known whether people with the other two were incubating longer or not at risk. That shows how little we know about CJD, even now.
One astonishing fact in the paper was that the rate of CJD in humans was the same the world over, except in New Guinea where a CJD-like disease exists and was almost certainly introduced when, early this century, cannibals ate someone who had CJD! There was much discussion about scrapie in sheep and whether there was a link with BSE in cattle. Experiments showed that sheep did not catch BSE even when exposed to all the usual causes.
There were different opinions among experts about what to do now. Incidents were gradually falling away to nothing, or almost nothing. The Government had decided that there was still too much unknown to allow beef on the bone to be sold. It was hoped that Scotland and the Welsh Assembly would not unilaterally allow it because this would cause much confusion.
Everyone seemed pleased with the way the meeting had gone and it was agreed to hold another next year. It may be under the aegis of the FSA. The question of better co-operation was raised. Two NfCG Consumer Groups had investigated the marking of milk and if Jacquie Salfield, who wrote the paper about colour coding of milk, had known about their findings she might have been able to save herself some of her own investigating.
John Brown
Draft Regulations which introduce an annual licensing regime for retail butchers' shops in England were formally notified to the EC on August 5th.
Subject to the outcome of the three-month notification procedure, MAFF anticipates that the Regulations will be laid before Parliament by the end of this year with a view to coming into effect by next summer. A charge of £100 will be payable to the Local Authority for each licence.
Those affected by the Regulations will be retail butchers, mobile shops and market stalls handling unwrapped raw meat together with ready-to-eat foods, including butchery service outlets in mixed business premises such as supermarkets. The scheme will not apply to butchers who only handle raw meat.
Licensing is subject to satisfactory hygiene conditions being in place, including documented Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point controls and enhanced staff hygiene training requirements.
Licensing of butchers' shops was a key recommendation of the Pennington Group which investigated an outbreak of e-coli 0157 food poisoning in Lanarkshire in 1996 when 21 people died and over 500 became ill.
It seems odd that the outbreak occurred in Scotland, yet the Regulation will only apply in England. A copy of the draft Regulation can be seen on the Department of Health Web Site - http://www.doh.gov.uk/busguide/foodsafe/butcher.htm or further information obtained from:
Mr. K. Power, Joint Food Safety and Standards Group,
phone 0171 972 5035 or fax 0171 972 5142.
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