Laboratory equipment and services suppliers and some health inspectors have misled manufacturers into believing they needed to increase microbiological sampling to meet new rules which come into force on January 11.
According to Kaarin Goodburn, secretary general of the Chilled Food Association (CFA), manufacturers have been “taken for a ride” by certain suppliers and misled by some environmental health officers who have “misinterpreted” the rules by incorrectly telling them that more testing was necessary.
“There needs to be some form of training programme for enforcers and we are working with the Food Standards Agency on this,” said Goodburn. “Enforcers need to understand that this does not mean you have to increase your testing when you already have HACCP in place.”
Manufacturers that already have good manufacturing practices (GMP) and effective hazard analysis critical control point (HACCP) procedures in place, will already comply with the European Commission Regulation on Microbiological Criteria for Foodstuffs, she said.
In a briefing document to its members, the CFA claimed the European Commission recognised that microbiological testing per se was not a control measure and in itself did not ensure food safety, whereas GMP and HACCP did. Only in the case of minced meat and meat preparations does the new regulation specify the frequency of microbiological testing required.
“The concern is the regulation has been misinterpreted and labs will start trying to sell testing kits because they say you need to increase testing, which is not true,” said Goodburn. “All that the regulations want is for people to use HACCP and since we started up the CFA in 1989 it has been a requirement to use HACCP.”
Rules on testing contained within the regulation were primarily intended for border inspection purposes and for port health authorities for imports into the European Union, argued Goodburn. She added that they also provided internal criteria for the number of Listeria monocytogenes permitted based on the shelf-life of products and “give trigger levels that would cause a recall to occur”
The CFA, in conjunction with the British Retail Consortium, has produced guidance for manufacturers and retailers to make clear what the new regulation actually requires.