Food Standards Agency
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Listen to this siteMonday 5 April 2004
This research project aims to investigate the management risk factors which result in foodborne disease outbreaks.
Study Duration : October 2001 to March 2005
Contractor : University of Wales College of Medicine
This project was commissioned to conduct a matched case control study to compare management practices in businesses (in England and Wales) where an outbreak has occurred with such practices in other comparable catering businesses. It is hoped that the results of the study will provide evidence to support environmental health officers in undertaking outbreak investigations and routine inspections and enable the catering industry to target resources effectively.
The project involved the following stages of work:
This study looked behind food safety control failures to compare underlying management, operational and commercial factors in businesses where there have and have not been outbreaks. The purpose is to help explain why outbreaks occur and to identify factors that may be targeted to reduce the risk of outbreaks in the future.
Outbreaks of foodborne disease occurring in England and Wales in catering businesses between 1 December 2002 and 31 December 2003 were considered. These outbreaks were identified through the Health Protection Agency (HPA) surveillance system at the Communicable Disease Surveillance Centre, Colindale, and through an informal network of caterers and environmental health officers. For each outbreak case, a control business was matched for local authority of occurrence and small medium-sized enterprise (SME) status was selected from the local authority registers. Case and control businesses were contacted by letter and telephone, and face-to-face interviews of the owner or manager or senior chef at the business were carried out by trained interviewers following a standard protocol.
Case businesses were more likely to be hotels, to serve Chinese cuisine and to be small or small/medium sized SMEs as opposed to micro SMEs.
The association between outbreaks and hotels seems to be explained by the fact that hotels are more likely to serve dinner. Factors associated with more complex dinner menus such as offering more expensive meals, preparation of foods from raw, and use of hot buffet displays were more common in hotels and Chinese restaurants.
An important finding was that neither formal training nor the presence of food safety management systems based on HACCP principles were linked to reduced risk, although implementation of these systems were not assessed during the study.
Contact : The results of the project were disseminated at the 'Food Law Enforcement – Learning from Others' Seminar held at Warwick, 6 and 7 September 2004. The final report is available from the Agency's Information Centre. To obtain a copy, please contact the Enquiry Desk, Information Services, Food Standards Agency (tel: 020 7276 8181/8182 or email: infocentre@foodstandards.gsi.gov.uk ) For any enquiries concerning this research project, please contact the relevant programme contact or email: science@foodstandards.gsi.gov.uk
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