FSA allow production of pet food in businesses that also produce food for human consumption.
I believe most consumers would be horrified to know that the Food Standard Agency FSA is allowing production of certain pet food in establishments that also produce food for human consumption, particularly where these contain foods of animal origin.
Whilst we are a nation of animal lovers and we generally believe that our pets and animals should be treated well in terms of their health and welfare, as I do, this appears to be a step too far.
Most people would also be concerned about the risks of cross-contamination of foods and would have grave concerns about food fraud.
This is at a time when the FSA are trying to change the food law codes of practice due to a shortage in Environmental health officers (EHO’s), Port Health Authority officers and Trading Standards Officers (TSO’s)
To burden the remaining overworked staff, who are at present under extreme pressure due to Covid-19, this seems to be completely the wrong time to contemplate such a risky action.
The guidance in the link below states that there is no need to follow best practice legally. However, in many industries, best practice is followed as a baseline, to enable the best possible defence when things do go wrong, as they do.
Surely the FSA, which is there to set the standards, should be promoting best practice at all times within the food industry and not, what I believe, to be in a race to the bottom, in terms of consumer safety.
My concerns are shared by others. The union Unison also has concerns. National officer Paul Bell, argued that “while the FSA had put safeguards in place, the move still created “significant risk”.
He added: “With all food regulation, when the TSOs, EHOs, Meat Hygiene Inspectors and Official Veterinarians are not physically in the premises day to day – and won’t be except during an inspection on an ad-hoc basis – we really don’t know what happens”.
“The problem with [a] risk-based [approach] is that premises are inspected based on failings during an announced visit – and FBOs will clean like mad when they know the regulators are coming. Unannounced visits happen when there is evidence to suggest malpractice or once every so often”
“Finally, the budgets of local authorities are so stretched that the resource burden of sending in TSOs/EHOs to these premises is not considered in the FSA policy.”
Unison are not the only ones concerned as I am. Tony Lewis, associate professor at the Royal Agricultural University, said:
“However, the history of food fraud in the UK is such that criminality has been and remains a significant problem – particularly in respect of the meat industry.”
Lewis pointed to Operation Aberdeen, a high - profile food fraud case in the late 1990s. He added: “In this operation, large scale criminality was uncovered involving food that was unfit for human consumption being brought into to food business, visually cleaned up and reintroduced into the human food chain.
“I am worried that we will now see many more incidents of this type and I do not see how HACCP (Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point) plans, labelling etc will guard against it. To my mind this is a huge backward step and, once again, the agency seems to be disconnected from reality.”
Below are links to one example of what can happen.
https://www.food.gov.uk/news-alerts/alert/fsa-prin-21-2019
https://www.foodsafetynews.com/2019/05/meat-pet-food-declared-unfit-to-eat-as-english-companys-violations-continue/
On a separate note, this Christmas there were stories of Rotten Turkeys.
Links below to news stories.
Tesco for the 4th year in a row has had the same problem.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/dec/26/tesco-apologises-after-customers-complain-of-rancid-rotten-turkeys
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/rotting-turkeys-ruin-christmas-families-23220738
But before we solely blame Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Waitrose and Aldi were also reported to have the same problems at Christmas 2020.
Maybe the FSA should address this continuing problem with the large supermarkets, so we can have what they say on their website; “Food we can trust”
Thank you for your continued help and support.
Stay safe.