FSA trying to change food law codes of practice, Sainsbury’s frozen burgers and Listeria in Veg

FSA trying to change food law codes of practice, Sainsbury’s frozen burgers and Listeria in frozen vegetables.
 
The Food Standards Agency are reviewing the Food Law Code of Practice, Food Law Practice Guidance, and implementation of the Competency Framework.
I believe that the aim of this review which includes a consultation that closes today, appears to be trying to downgrade the skills, knowledge and experience of Environmental Health Officers (EHO’s) Environmental Health Practitioners (EHP’s) & Port Health Authority staff over a period of time.
This will not be to the benefit of public health or in reducing foodborne illness. It is more about further deregulation through the back door.
The FSA also appear to believe that gathering information by computer-based systems is far better than long term investment & training of more such highly trained people, who are very effective on the front line.
The examples below show why the work of truly independent inspections and food sampling by EHO’s etc is so vitally important for our protection, as we all need to eat food, whatever your dietary requirements are.  
A report about Sainsbury’s frozen beef burgers indicates they contained the bacterium E.coli O157 in a 2017 outbreak.
The report was published earlier this year by Public Health England (PHE).
 
Although the retailer and the Food Standards Agency (FSA) issued a product recall at that time, eight out of 12 cases required hospitalisation and four developedHaemolytic Uraemic Syndrome (HUS). Link to the article below.
HUS is basically a form of acute kidney failure.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7522850/
 
Furthermore, the name of the supplier to Sainsbury’s has not been revealed. This research, I am sure, is of public interest and should have been put in the public domain as both the FSA and PHE are public bodies and therefore paid for by the taxpayer and the public.
 
Some articles on this suggests the researches of this report said it was possibly due to products being undercooked. However, this in my opinion, is highly unlikely.
 
In the late 1990’s Reading University, on behalf of the Department of Health, carried out research on the cooking of burgers. They found in the majority of cases cooking at a temperature of 70 degrees for 2 minutes would kill the bacterium E.coli O157 where or if it existed.  However, they were sometimes unable to kill this bacterium in the lager type products such as quarter pounders, due to a possible combination of such factors as:  length of the time frozen prior to cooking, fat content and amount of salt in the product,  etc.  
 
The burgers in this outbreak were quarter pounders from Sainsbury’s “Taste the Difference” range.    
 
Research carried out between 2018-2019 in England from catering and retail premises attached, indicated 24% of frozen vegetables and 2% of frozen fruit samples were found to have Listeria. Link below to this research published which the Agency failed yet again to mention on its website as news.
 
 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168160520303433
 
 
 
Thank you for your continued help and support.
 
Stay safe
 
 
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