Food Standards Agency
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The Food Standards Agency Northern Ireland (FSANI) and safefood today announced the launch of a new food surveillance system (FSS) that will act as a central databank for health professionals and enable the rapid transfer and exchange of information about food samples being sent to laboratories.
Each year in Northern Ireland, approximately 15,000 food samples are collected by district council environmental health officers (EHOs) and sent to the Public Health Laboratory and the Public Analyst�s Laboratory. The system will improve access to and analysis of information.
Speaking at the launch event, FSANI Director Morris McAllister said: 'This is an exciting time for environmental and public health professionals here in Northern Ireland. This new system commissioned by the Food Standards Agency is set to revolutionise food sampling, enabling comparisons with local, regional, national and international data, as well as allowing closer working between District Councils and laboratories.
'The system has been designed to enhance consumer protection and improve consumer confidence as users can identify emerging trends in food safety and allow swift targeted action where necessary. Food safety data can now be accessed much more quickly and food sampling programmes focused to ensure maximum public health protection.'
Martin Higgins, Chief Executive of safe food, which funded the development added: 'This ground-breaking project will consolidate the various islands of food safety information into a centralised repository and will be of great value to those accessing it and will ultimately benefit the public at large. By working in partnership with the district councils, the Food Standards Agency Northern Ireland and the Chief Environmental Health Officers Group (NI), the system will also ensure future linkage to an all-island food safety surveillance repository currently being developed by safe food.'
John McKee, UKFSS (Northern Ireland) Project Board Chair explains: 'The system was piloted with a number of district councils using it to complete food analysis. A programme of training and support was implemented before the system was installed at each council. Our biggest challenge faced was with councils and labs all using various IT systems and ensuring that these systems could interact with each other. These concerns have all been overcome and the system is now live and proving, even at this early stage, to be a great success.'
This is part of a larger project involving the FSA in Scotland, Wales and England and over 400 local authorities and their respective analytical services. The system is based on a successful project originally developed in Scotland and piloted in six Public Analyst laboratories in England.
Using the FSS, EHOs from each of the 26 district councils can submit food samples to the relevant lab and download the completed results. The FSS also allows results to be queried online using a secure website.
For enquiries on the food surveillance system in Northern Ireland, please contact John McKee
Tel:028 90494573. Email:
john.mckee@egehc.co.uk
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