The FSA is supportive of a transition to a more risk-based meat inspection regime and, as the competent UK food safety authority, it is negotiating with other EU members to bring about change in the legislation to enable it. However, FSA chairman Lord Jeff Rooker has warned that it will take about five to seven years to achieve it.
Speaking at a recent meeting organised by the British Meat Processors Association (BMPA), BMPA president David Gunner called for a transition to more efficient, risk-based and less costly system.
"I do welcome the steps being taken in Europe to explore changes to existing EU legislation that would allow more modern inspection methods to address today's food safety hazards and, hopefully, be less burdensome for efficient and highly performing operators," said Gunner. "I recognise that things take time in Europe, but we now have an outline timetable for this and I therefore urge progress in this direction."
Gunner added: "Meanwhile, in this country the industry has an historic, onerous meat inspection system delivered by a high-cost monopoly service provider in the FSA."
In reply, Rooker urged caution about the UK's role in driving legislative change. "It is probably important in the political context of Brussels that the UK isn't seen to be the lead in this," he warned. "The fact of the matter is we gave them all BSE: we actually know more about it than anybody else from a scientific point of view but the Commission is leading on this programme."
But he added: "It will be something like a five- to seven-year programme and it will require experimentation once we have got a system and it will require derogation in the law to test any new procedures in our own plants. But it is underway and it is not going to happen tomorrow."
While Gunner recognised the crucial role the FSA plays as both the regulator and the enforcer, he remarked that the industry was eager to see responsibility for carrying out meat inspections removed from the FSA. "It does not have to be the engine for delivering meat inspection," he argued.
He also urged the government to support calls made by the independent Task Force on Farming Regulation, led by Richard Macdonald, for "a risk-based approach to inspection, including the concept and practice of earned recognition".
The notion behind earned recognition is that those companies demonstrating good hygiene control would benefit from a reduced focus of attention from the regulatory authorities. This, in turn, would allow inspectors to concentrate their increasingly limited resources more cost-effectively on the real offenders.
Food minister Jim Paice, while reporting that the government supported a move to a more risk-based meat inspection regime, would not put a timetable on when he expected any change to be achieved because of the "EU constraints".
"I do expect the Agency to consider [Macdonald's] recommendation where a plant has some form of earned recognition, with a good track record of compliance, then it should be able to choose an accredited client-sector provider for meat inspections," said Paice. "But if [the FSA] wants to go down that route it will have my whole support, including representations to Europe to persuade them to change the regulations to permit it."
A move to a more risk-based inspection regime received qualified support from Sue Davies, chief policy adviser for Which?, the consumer rights group. "We completely agree that we need to have a more risk-based approach; we need to make sure that meat inspection is actually focused on the hazards we are faced with today," said Davies. "But we also need to be really careful [that meat processors are] performing well because meat is a really high-risk product and requires a high level of oversight in order to ensure the product is safe."