UNISON: Breaking Up Meat Inspection Controls Is Recipe For Disaster, UK

Main Category: Nutrition / Diet
Also Included In: Public Health
Article Date: 18 Jul 2007 - 1:00 PDT

email to a friend   printer friendly   view / write opinions   rate article

UNISON, the union for meat hygiene inspectors, is urging the Food Standards Agency (FSA) not to break up Britain's publicly-owned meat inspection service.

Following an industry review, the FSA board is set to make a decision (on 19 July) over whether to break up Britain's strong, independent Meat Hygiene Service and grant licenses to private firms to carry out inspections - an idea pushed by the meat industry.

But UNISON is backing the other option facing FSA decision-makers: for the government to retain and invest in a 'transformed' Meat Hygiene Service.

UNISON National Officer for Meat Inspectors Ben Priestley said:

"This is a recipe for disaster as meat inspection demands a highly trained workforce motivated by public protection. Private companies acting in competition with one another are hardly in the best position to deliver public health because they are ultimately driven by making a profit, rather than prioritising public safety.

"Reports and surveys continue to show that hygiene standards in the UK are still unacceptably low and must be improved. But breaking up official controls by licensing private firms to do the work will immeasurably weaken the ability of the FSA to control serious hygiene and public health issues.

"Light touch enforcement and deregulation in the 1990s led to the BSE and e-Coli crises and must be avoided as an outcome of this review."

Last year UNISON carried out a confidential survey of its 1,000-plus Meat Hygiene Service members and has now released its findings to the FSA board.

A selection of the results indicated that:

· 92% of members do not believe that introducing Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points (HACCP) has improved the level of faecal contamination or carcases presented for inspection.

· 53% of meat plants employ trimmers to remove faecal contamination prior to inspection.

· Half the abattoirs using trimmers still regularly present between 40-100% of carcases for official inspection with visible faecal contamination.

· 64% of meat inspectors are still unofficially expected to trim faecal contamination off carcases at the inspection point.

UNISON's findings were backed up by the report of the EU's Food & Veterinary Office (FVO) Mission to the UK between 29 May and 13 June 2006. The FVO inspectors found that: "in the majority of slaughterhouses visited, the procedures for dressing, dehiding and evisceration were not adequate to avoid contamination of meat."

UNISON's own survey and the FVO report have subsequently been backed up by an independent study commissioned by the FSA in early 2007. Among a number of concerns, consultants working for the FSA reported that there are a significant proportion of carcases arriving at the inspection point with some level of contamination. In a final attempt to persuade FSA board members to reject the licensing of private firms, and accept the option for a 'transformed' Meat Hygiene Service, UNISON has written to each FSA board member to outline their concerns. The letter states:

"Strong independent meat inspection remains the only guarantee of consumer safety in an industry that continues to produce dirty meat. Please vote to keep it that way. Only a transformed MHS can deliver the necessary improvement in abattoir hygiene."

http://www.unison.org.uk