Andrew Rhodes, FSA chief operating officer, told Food Manufacture’s Food Safety Conference last week (October 16) the aim was to highlight hygiene practices that, while not illegal, fell short of the standards that should be expected in the food industry.
“This will concern food that does not have a safety issue but has some issue linked with it,” said Rhodes. He hoped highlighting sub-standard practices would help to raise standards across the food industry.
An FSA spokeswoman told FoodManufacture.co.uk: “Reports made by the FSA ‘in the public interest’ would be used in circumstances where there is evidence that an organisation has behaved in a way that consumers are likely to feel falls short of the standards expected of them.”
For example, that may include a food business that delayed telling their customers about a problem that they would have a legitimate interest or concern in, but would not necessarily be likely to cause harm.
‘Legal or any other formal action’
“This will not replace legal or any other formal action,” said the spokeswoman.
Last month, the FSA board meeting in Aberdeen discussed “naming and shaming” retailers and their processor and farming suppliers that failed to meet campylobacter targets. Retailers should incentivise poultry suppliers to control soaring levels of campylobacter, board members agreed.
Campylobacter remains the UK’s most common cause of food poisoning and is responsible for about 100 deaths each year. A recent FSA report branded the industry’s failure to meet targets for tackling campylobacter as “disappointing”.
Rhodes also denied that spending cuts leading to fewer safety inspections would threaten food safety. “When it comes to food safety and food standards, the law said it is the absolute responsibility of food businesses to ensure that the food they produce is safe and legal,” he said.
“Their job is to ensure that what the label says is actually in the product. It is the government’s legal job to verify that appropriate controls are carried out.”
‘Earned recognition’
The FSA should rethink how it deploys its resources, said Rhodes, who highlighted the policy of ‘earned recognition’. That would involve targeting inspections at businesses that were more likely to breach food safety standards.
“There is a role to be played in looking at the schemes people have in place and looking at their track record and asking if we will give them some recognition from that,” said Rhodes.
“If you’ve got a sandwich factory that makes a million sandwiches a week and all kinds of independent audits, does an environmental health officer turning up once every six months make a difference? Possibly not,” he said.
Would it not be better for than environmental health officer to be able to visit that very dodgy business that they know about? Or that business they have not yet visited? If you are going to deploy your efforts, where are you going to deploy them for maximum benefit?”
But Rhodes stressed the FSA did not believe large businesses don’t pose significant risks. “Of course they do,” he said.
Watch FoodManufacture.co.uk's interview with Rhodes here.
Meanwhile the main sponsors of the conference were Interek, Ishida and Alchemy.
Associated sponsors were NSF, Safefood 360, Softrace and the Institute of Food Research.
More news and views from Food Manufacture’s Food safety conference will be published later this week.