Plaid Cymru AM Leanne Wood has welcomed plans to issue new guidance on the dual use of machinery for preparing raw and cooked meats.
The AM for the South Wales Central area wrote to the Food Standards Agency (FSA) last month following the publication of a report from Consumer Focus Wales.
The report suggested lessons had not been learnt after the E.coli O157 outbreak in the South Wales valleys of 2005 which left 157 people – mostly children – ill and one boy, five-year-old Mason Jones from Deri, dead.
One of the headline findings of the report was that some food businesses are still using the same equipment for both cooked and raw meats, which was cited as a likely cause of the outbreak.
At the moment, some local authorities in Wales are erring on the side of caution by insisting on the separation of machinery whereas others are not going beyond the realms of current policy.
In a letter to the FSA’s chair, Jeff Rooker, Leanne said:
“Consumer Focus Wales says that the law on using separate machinery is not clear and that your organisation is in a position to issue guidelines to make it unequivocally clear that complex, hard to clean machinery should never be used for both cooked and raw meats.
“I have concerns about this and support the view of Consumer Focus Wales and I would urge you to ensure that this matter is clarified as soon as possible in order that the risk of another outbreak can be reduced.
“I’d be grateful if you could inform me what steps the Food Standards Agency can take to ban the use of any machinery for both cooked and raw meats.”
In reply, Mr Rooker said:
“The FSA’s current work to look at the cross-contamination risks associated with dual use of equipment such as meat slicers, meat mincers and vacuum packing machines is well advanced. The FSA will issue new guidelines for public consultation by the summer.”
Leanne led calls for a public inquiry into the E.coli outbreak to allow a thorough investigation to take place. The inquiry was eventually established and chaired by Professor Hugh Pennington who made a series of recommendations when his findings were published last year.
Leanne said: “I am pleased the FSA is to issue new guidelines for public consultation on the separation of machinery. If there were clear guidelines issued to meat processing companies and butchers then we would not have this postcode lottery as to whether the cooked and raw meat has been separated or not.
“If the new guidelines recommend separation, and I hope they will, it will of course incur additional costs for food firms but I think this is a price worth paying. We can ill-afford to have another outbreak of E.coli in Wales of the magnitude we saw in 2005 and we should do everything in our power to prevent one.”
