The Food Standards Agency (FSA) is coming under increasing pressure to strengthen its advice to caterers about the sourcing of ‘safer’ eggs from the UK, following indications that the deaths of two residents at a nursing home in Sunderland might be linked to salmonella poisoning in eggs laid by unvaccinated hens in Spain.
Tom Humphrey, a member of the FSA’s Advisory Committee on the Microbiological Safety of Food (ACMSF), last week called on the Agency to stress to caterers the importance of sourcing eggs from sources that had been treated for infectious diseases such as salmonella.
“We should be recommending that eggs are purchased that are safer,” said Humphrey, who is professor of veterinary bacterial zoonoses at the University of Bristol and also a member of the FSA’s Epidemiology of Foodborne Infections Group.
Part of the problem, Humphrey suggested, was that wholesalers and caterers were not sourcing eggs from those with approved quality assurance schemes. “Clearly the system is not working,” he added. Fellow ACMSF member, Paul McMullin, a senior veterinarian and md of Poultry Health Services, added: “Assurance [schemes for eggs] is a big part of it and it’s not just vaccination. Those supplying in areas where risk is greater have a responsibility to take greater care.”
ACMSF member Jenny Morris, food safety policy officer at the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health, also called on the FSA to improve its guidance on egg sourcing, since she argued the recommendations about sourcing from vaccinated poultry flock sources were “really hidden”
Unlike in many catering outlets, most supermarket eggs are sourced from UK flocks, which comply with schemes such as British Lion quality eggs promoted by the British Egg Industry Council (BEIC). All birds destined for Lion quality egg-producing flocks are vaccinated against Salmonella Enteritidis using an approved vaccine.
Chief executive of the BEIC, Mark Williams, has written to FSA chief executive Tim Smith demanding that advice to caterers on eggs be tightened up to stress the higher safety profile of eggs from vaccinated stocks.
Last week its was announced that the FSA and Health Protection Agency (HPA) were investigating a recent increase in the number of cases of Salmonella Enteritidis phage type 14b in England and Wales. A total of 443 cases have been reported to the HPA this year, compared with 137 cases in 2008. On Friday the FSA said evidence suggested the increase in cases might be linked to an egg production premises in Spain, since it had received information from Spanish officials indicating that salmonella had been found in a particular flock on the production holding, Granja Avícola ‘El Angel’. Supplies from this source have been stopped.
Fourteen clusters of cases in England and Wales are currently being investigated to determine if there is a common source of infection. The clusters have been linked to a number of different catering establishments and one care home.
The FSA’s Liz Redmond said caterers “should be treating these eggs as though they are infected”