CFA continues to respond to the STEC fatal outbreak between April and June, which took the lives of two people, caused illness in nearly 300 and is estimated to have cost the industry in excess of £10m. The outbreak has prompted CFA’s call for a review of STEC test methods, the interpretation of unconfirmed results and the application and legal relevance of HPA RTE criteria for generic (non-pathogenic) E. coli. Under the advice of FSA in mid-June certain short shelf life foods (e.g. sandwiches and wraps) were recalled with media reporting the FSA’s hypothesis of salad leaves being the source. […]

It’s now more than eight years since the UK’s referendum vote and the huge complexity, costs, inefficiencies and negative impacts on GB food supply and trade of new Brexit bureaucracy agreed by UK government (UKG) with its largest trading partner – the EU – are becoming ever clearer. Rules must be revised to ease legitimate trade with the EU, on which the UK depends for its food security. For example – getting just one type of newly-required document (Export Health Certificates, EHCs) signed off for GB-EU trade in products of animal origin since December 2020 has more than £200m to […]

More than 80 organisations submitted comments to the consultation on the EU’s proposed changed to Listeria monocytogenes regulations (microbiological criteria of foodstuffs Reg 2073/2005). These included the CFA-led Industry Listeria Group which submitted an extensive response which can be found on the CFA website https://bit.ly/4dqDPvU. The EU’s SCOPAFF confirmed by a vote of 25 to 2 Member States, the draft regulation amendments on 3 July (ahead of the deadline of 16 July the EC had previously given to the WTO to comment) and the legislation will go ahead, changing criterion 1.2b to apply throughout shelf life. With legislation being implemented […]