Author: admin

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Jim Fitzpatrick on 2014-06-10.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what recent discussions he has had with the Food Standards Agency on joined-up action at both national and local level to tackle food fraud.

Jane Ellison

The Food Standards Agency (FSA) continues to develop its capability in relation to food fraud, working closely with other Government Departments including the Department of Health, local authorities and industry to detect and deter food fraud.

The FSA is building an enhanced intelligence gathering network to increase the opportunity to capture and act on intelligence which may be indicative of future risks relating to food fraud, as well as producing strategic and tactical assessments to share with relevant enforcement agencies. Through this, the FSA has strengthened its links with other enforcement agencies, including the National Trading Standards Board, National Crime Agency, the Intellectual Property Office and the Gangmasters Licencing Agency. The FSA is a member of the Government Agencies Intelligence Network and is sharing and receiving intelligence through this network to support cross-government investigations.

At a European level, the FSA is fully engaged with the European Commission Food Fraud Team and its network which is now sharing intelligence to support cross-Europe investigations.

The FSA also provide support to local authorities in their food fraud related investigations through the provision of financial support, expert advice and training.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Jim Fitzpatrick on 2014-06-10.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what recent assessment he has made of the effectiveness of current tools available to enforcement officers to take swift action in tackling food fraud.

Jane Ellison

The Food Standards Agency (FSA) works with local authority enforcement officers to ensure that food law is applied across the entire food chain. Direction and guidance on the approach that local authority food law regulatory services should take is given in the statutory Food Law Code of Practice (the Code). The FSA regularly assesses the effectiveness of tools available to these enforcement officers through undertaking audit of local authorities’ enforcement services, reviewing the Code and ensuring lessons are learnt from major incidents.

The Code sets out instructions and criteria to which the authorities must have regard and is periodically reviewed to ensure that it reflects current enforcement practices and supports local authorities’ delivery of their official control obligations and that enforcement is consistent, effective and proportionate.

The FSA provides specific tools to support local authorities with investigations relating to potential food fraud. The FSA operates the Food Fraud Database, which utilises specialist intelligence management software to record intelligence reports and identify links, and uses this to assist local investigations. The FSA also provides local authorities with financial support through its Fighting Fund, expert advice through its Food Fraud Advisory Unit and holds dedicated training courses for enforcement officers.

In addition, the FSA is building an enhanced intelligence gathering network to increase the opportunity to capture and act on intelligence which may be indicative of future risks relating to food fraud, as well as producing strategic and tactical assessments to share with relevant enforcement agencies.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Jim Fitzpatrick on 2014-06-10.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he has taken to strengthen food surveillance and the analytical capability of local authorities to pre-empt potential food fraud in the last 12 months.

Jane Ellison

The main role for the Food Standards Agency (FSA) in combatting food fraud is to provide assistance and resources to United Kingdom local authorities (LAs) food fraud related investigations through the provision of financial support, expert advice and training. The FSA continues to develop its capability in relation to food fraud, working closely with other Government Departments, LAs and industry to detect and deter food fraud.

The FSA provides additional funding on an annual basis to UK Enforcement Authorities for sampling and surveillance of food to help ensure risk-based targeted checks at ports and inland. Food authenticity and food adulteration issues have been prioritised in consultation with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) and the Department of Health.

In 2013-14, the FSA made available £1.6 million to LAs and ports plus an additional £700,000 specifically for authenticity issues including: meat speciation and fish speciation by DNA testing; added water in chicken; authenticity of durum wheat; and authenticity of basmati rice.

Over the last 12 months, FSA and DEFRA have worked with the Authenticity Steering Group to address and prioritise analytical method development for the Food Authenticity Research Programme. Current activities include knowledge transfer sessions, which have been joint-funded by FSA and DEFRA, to enhance the range of analytical methods available to support LA enforcement activity. For example, a knowledge transfer event took place for Public Analysts on DNA extraction processes in early 2014 with a further two planned for later this year.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Jim Fitzpatrick on 2014-06-10.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many local authorities have not conducted any sampling to check food composition over the last 12 months.

Jane Ellison

The Food Standards Agency (FSA) collects food law enforcement monitoring returns from local authorities annually. Data for the period 1 April 2013 to 31 March 2014 is currently being collected. Following collation and analysis, the FSA plans to publish this data in November 2014.

The FSA advises that the following local authorities did not report any food composition sampling in 2012-13 via the Local Authority Enforcement Monitoring System (LAEMS):

Armagh

Birmingham

Blackburn

Bolton

Darlington

Isle of Wight

Leicester City

Plymouth City

Redcar and Cleveland

Rochdale

Rutland

South Lanarkshire

Swindon

Tameside

All of these authorities reported taking other labelling or microbiological samples in 2012-13.

A table has been placed in the Library which shows how many food standards samples (composition and labelling) each local authority reported via LAEMS in 2012-13, together with a comparison against the number reported in 2011-12 and how many food standards samples each local authority reported through a FSA-funded project.

All of the reported food standards samples were official samples and would have been submitted to the local authority’s appointed Public Analyst for analysis. Out of 22,055 food standards samples in 2012-13, 4,387 were funded by the FSA, all other food standards samples would have been paid for by the local authority. By comparison, in 2011-12, the FSA funded 5,072 out of 21,970 food standards samples.

For some local authorities, the FSA funded sampling figure is larger than the number included in the LAEMS report. The difference will be due to the LAEMS reports only including samples for which the analytical result was received from the Public Analyst before 31 March 2013.