Lord Rooker: If we leave the EU without a deal, access to food safety alerts could be life or death
3 min read
Not having full access to the ‘Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed’ is about more than trade, it will mean less data on food safety issues, writes Lord Rooker.
It was in 1979 well after the UK joined the EEC (EU) that the Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed was created. The idea was to share on a 24/7 basis information of food safety risks between Members.
The Members are the EU 28 plus Switzerland and EEA 3, of Liechtenstein, Norway and Iceland.
All members have an out of hours contact point, on duty officers for the urgent transfers of shared information.
There are no associate members. A nation is either a member of RASFF or it is not. Part of the website is open, but not for the urgent alerts.
In the latest Annual Report for 2017, a total of 3832 original notifications were transmitted through RASFF of which 942 were classified as alert, 596 as information for follow-up, 706 information for attention and 1588 as border rejection notifications.
In short, RASFF issues more than 10 notifications every day across Europe which is a 28% increase on the previous year. These include three serious food risk alerts requiring rapid action every day.
RASFF notifications about food and feed controls at the outer EEA external borders account for 46% of the total.
The UK is a key player in the system being in the top five of countries notifying information both of original notifications and follow up notifications.
Key hazards identified include, Salmonella, mercury, aflatoxins. In addition, information on foodborne outbreaks, foreign body contamination, hazardous composition as well as fraud and intentional contamination and tampering. Products affected involve, fish, meat, poultry, nuts and seeds.
Main countries where notification of origin arise include, in order, Brazil, Turkey, China, Spain, United States, Italy, Iran and Poland.
Some very nasty diseases are involved which can lead to foodborne illness requiring hospitalisation and in some cases fatalities. Just one example will suffice.
During 2017, 8 members, Belgium, Czech, France, Luxembourg, Holland, Norway, Sweden and the UK reported cases of Salmonella Enteritidis in clusters showing repeat outbreak profiles. It was traced to Polish eggs. RASFF reported that 600 consignments with 97 million eggs distributed to 18 EU/EEA and 30 million eggs to 12 third countries were withdrawn. Targeted control measures by RASFF were very effective in protecting the public.
There are other examples of multi country outbreaks of Listeria which lead to a massive information exchange which identified frozen corn and frozen vegetable mix products. Actions taken will significantly reduce the risk of human infections and contain the outbreak.
The issue of UK participation after Brexit has been raised many times in the Lords, both in Select Committee and the Chamber. Answer never clear. But the Public Health Minister went on record to EU Committee as “not having full RASFF access would mean less data than is currently available which may affect the UK’s timely communications on food and feed safety issues”.
If we leave with a deal, we get a transition period in which the UK remains a full member. If no deal, then no information.
This is about more than trade. It could be life or death. So which Minister is going to be accountable for the consequence of the UK being outside RASFF?
Lord Jeffrey Rooker is Labour Member of the House of Lords and Vice-Chair of the All-Parliamentary Group on Food and Health.
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