Foodlaw-Reading Dr David Jukes, The University of Reading, UK
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Food Law News - UK - 2015

FSA News Item, 22 September 2015

ENFORCMENT - Northern Ireland's eighth food surveillance sampling report published

The Northern Ireland Strategic Committee on Food Surveillance has published its eighth report on food sampling activity in Northern Ireland in 2014.

The report covers the targeted, risk-based, sampling and testing of food carried out by local councils in Northern Ireland across the food supply and retail chain.

Overall, a high percentage of the wide range of foodstuffs sampled were found to comply with food safety and standards legislation. The main issues continue to be in relation to incorrect labelling and description of food.

Similar to 2013, the results of sampling in 2014 indicate that there have been relatively few detections of foodborne pathogens. In 2014, 6,371 samples were submitted for microbiological examination and 1894 samples were submitted for chemical analysis.

Key findings of the report were:

• In total, 61% of microbiological samples and 69% of chemical samples were satisfactory.
• Only a small number of the samples, which did not meet microbiological standards, were found to contain pathogens that could present a risk to health.
• The majority of samples that failed chemical analysis were due to labelling issues, rather than the presence of harmful substances.

As with the committee's previous reports, the eighth report contains a number of recommendations to further improve food safety compliance and gives an indication of the issues the committee might explore in future work.

A copy of the report is available on this site. See: Food Sampling by District Councils in Northern Ireland 2014