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Food focus

Soundbites

A round-up of some of the highlights and points of interest from keynote speakers

COMMUNICATING IN TODAY’S WORLD

Discussing the importance of risk communication around food safety, John O’Brien, CEO of the Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI) said he believes his country has a natural bent towards communication skills, having produced four Nobel prizewinners for literature: W. B. Yeats, George Bernard Shaw, Samuel Becket and Seamus Heaney. “We have a strong track record of excellence,” he told conference delegates.

However, Dr O’Brien acknowledged that the media are “really very good at not letting the facts get in the way of a good story” and said that he still hopes one day to read his dream headline: “12 million meals and nobody sick”. “That’s how it should be,” he said.

Dr O’Brien said that Ireland is fortunate to have a large information technology industry which FSAI makes full use of. It’s found SMS text messaging to be an effective way of communicating with shellfish producers who are more often to be found out on the job than sitting at a desk. Real time information on tidal movements, late tides and biotoxin monitoring is relayed via the website. So too are enforcement updates.

“If a food business is shut down – and we close two or three a month – the information is immediately posted on our website. And consumers often tell me that they check out the website to find out if the restaurant they’re considering is noted on it.

“I’d like to be able to put scores on the door, to get more information out to consumers via our website so they can get a better handle on the risks they may be taking when they go out for a meal.”

The FSAI website receives around 12000 hits a month. Earlier in the year a Special Eurobarometer Report by the European Food Safety Authority stated that Ireland’s population is among the most positive about progress in food safety, with 64% of those surveyed believing it had improved during the past 10 years.

Economic pressures fuel hygiene issues

Bill Reilly, recently retired head of the gastro-intestinal section of Health Protection Scotland and a board member of the UK Food Standards Authority (UKFSA), said he believes the financial pressures faced by farmers can contribute to food contamination.

Honorary professor at the University of Glasgow Veterinary School, Professor Reilly, speaking on the changing epidemiology of foodborne infections, defined contamination as the addition of pathogens to food during production as a result of outside influences (ie: Campylobacter, E.Coli O157:H7) as opposed to infected food where the food already contains pathogens, such as BSE and TB.

He explained his hypotheses on contamination to conference delegates by comparing the UK prices of a litre of diet coke, water and milk.

“A sugary drink with the sugar taken out costs 68p ($1.70); a natural resource in a bottle costs £1.29 and a litre of milk, from a cow that is housed on a farm for around two years and milked for about 10 months a year presently earns UK farmers around 18p per litre, leaving them with a profit margin of virtually zero.”

Professor Reilly got out his shopping basket again when he compared a six-pack of chippies, selling at 16p a packet with six eggs, at 10p an egg.

“The eggs have come from pullets fed, watered and housed by the farmer over 25-26 weeks before coming into lay. Yet consumers are willing to pay almost twice as much for the equivalent of a small potato and additives and flavourings we are often advised not to eat.”

The consequences, he believes, speak for themselves. “At all stages of the food chain we are trying to contain costs, and that adds to the burden of contamination. We as consumers perhaps need to reassess our priorities.”

Professor Reilly’s presentation catalogued the history of foodborne disease in Scotland, outlined the key drivers that led to the establishment of UKFSA in 2000, and outlined the work of the Advisory Committee on Microbiological Safety of Food, an independently appointed committee that provides science-based advice to UKFSA.

You can view these presentations in full by downloading them from NZFSA’s website at: www.nzfsa.govt.nz/events/archive/nzfsa-conf-2006/index.htm