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What is RSS?Friday 16 February 2007
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Today's Food Standards Agency bird flu update includes details of yesterday's briefing to the FSA Board, and the joint final investigation report by the Agency, Defra, Health Protection Agency, and Meat Hygiene Service.
The joint final report examined transmission via imported Hungarian turkey meat. The FSA-led part of the investigation was launched to check whether meat from a restricted zone in Hungary had been brought to the Bernard Matthews plant at Holton, Suffolk.
This followed the hypothesis that there may be a link between the Hungarian outbreaks and the bird flu outbreak in Suffolk. If it had been discovered that meat exported from Hungary to the UK had come from inside an avian influenza restricted zone, this would have been illegal under EU law.
Its main findings are:
‘We reiterate our advice that properly cooked poultry meat does not pose a food safety risk.’
Andrew Wadge, Food Standards Agency Chief Scientist, said:
'This report shows that according to the best available evidence no turkey meat from areas previously infected with avian influenza in Hungary was received at the Bernard Matthews plant in Holton.
'It is important to remember that this investigation has always been about the illegality or otherwise of meat imported into the UK, and not about food safety. We reiterate our advice that properly cooked poultry meat does not pose a food safety risk.'
The HPA's investigation focused on establishing if there was any health threat to the workers in the processing plant, or the wider poultry farm.
Its assessment concluded the risk to the workers health was very low and, as a result, they didn�t require any antiviral treatment.
The assessment also took into account a number of pieces of current information, including:
The risk to food processing workers and other personnel working in around the Bernard Mathews Food plant has been assessed by the HPA as being very low.
Back to topAndrew Wadge updated his blog yesterday to talk about the issue of testing meat for the virus. Find out more at (External) food.gov.uk/scienceblog .
Back to topAddressing the FSA open Board meeting in London yesterday, the Agency's Chief Executive John Harwood provided a detailed briefing,including a powerpoint presentation , on the outbreak of bird flu at the Bernard Matthews farm at Holton, Suffolk,
He set out the history of the disease in Britain, the siting and layout of the farm and associated plant, the legal duties and powers of the various agencies involved and a brief history of the outbreak so far.
He explained that the first birds had died on Tuesday 30 January and that Bernard Matthews had notified the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) and the State Veterinary Service (SVS) on Thursday 1 February. Restrictions on the movement of poultry were put in place on Saturday 3 February.
The roles of the three main agencies involved (Defra and the SVS, the Health Protection Agency, and the Food Standards Agency and its executive agency, the Meat Hygiene Service) were set out.
Defra and the SVS were responsible for implementing the animal health measures contained in the EU's Avian Influenza Directive, the main legal framework for controlling the outbreak. The Health Protection Agency had two sets of responsibilities; the health of the workers who might have become exposed to bird flu, and the health of the general public.
The FSA and MHS continued to discharge their responsibilities for food safety. Mr Harwood emphasised the efforts that had gone in to making sure that all these agencies worked effectively and collaboratively over the course of the outbreak. The report into the incident, being published on Friday February 16, would be a product of that joint working, he said.
He told the Board that when the outbreak was over the Agency, in accordance with its normal practice, would carry out a review, as it would with any other incident. This would look at the sequence of events and action and see whether any lessons could be learned for the future.
One of the key points in the investigation of the incident came on 8 February, when early results from the laboratory analysis indicated that the H5N1 strain of the virus might be identical to that in the Hungarian bird flu outbreak. This raised concerns that meat from the restricted zone in Hungary might have gone to the Bernard Matthews Suffolk plant.
The Agency's investigators working over the weekend of 10/11 February were able to identify bulk consignments that contained meat sourced from Hungary in cold storage in Chesterfield, Derbyshire or in Holton, Suffolk. These were the consignments that Bernard Matthews agreed to withhold from further distribution until it could be verified that they did not contain meat from the restricted zone in Hungary. Sufficient information was received from the Hungarian authorities on 14 February, showing that none of the meat had come from the restricted zzne, to enable this meat to be released on to the market.
Mr Harwood pointed out that one of the principles of European food law was the traceability of food. This enabled it to be established positively that no meat had come from a restricted area.
Food safety advice
Turning to the issue of food safety, Agency Chief Scientist Dr Andrew Wadge reiterated existing FSA advice, that bird flu is not a food safety issue.
Dr Wadge explained that the H5N1 virus is destroyed by cooking. Should the virus survive cooking it is very likely that it would be destroyed anyway. This is because avian flu is a respiratory disease of birds. The receptors for infection are not present in the human gut. In order for the disease to transfer to humans 'intense contact' is needed with an infected bird.
Dr Wadge urged the public to follow the Agency's normal food hygiene advice in relation to handling raw poultry meat in the kitchen. People should ensure that turkey meat is cooked to the point where the juices run clear and there are no red parts in the meat.
Back to topCheck out FSA Chief Scientist Dr Andrew Wadge's blog postings on bird flu at (External) food.gov.uk/scienceblog
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