Putting Food Safety into Focus

Food safety has been brought into focus this week with a report from the European Food Safety Authority showing that Salmonella and Campylobacter show significant levels of resistance to common antimicrobials in humans and animals.

And a UK study of Campylobacter in chicken has shown that 73 per cent of chickens tested positive for the presence of campylobacter and seven per cent of packaging also tested positive.

The EFSA report shows that options for treating some of the most common forms of food-borne illnesses are getting fewer and fewer because they are showing more signs of antimicrobial resistance.

Multi-drug resistant forms of Salmonella are spreading across Europe according to a new report from the European Food Safety Authority.

And there is also high resistance to the antimicrobial ciprofloxacin in Campylobacter in both humans and animals in some Member States.

The report, EFSA-ECDC European Union Summary Report on antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in zoonotic and indicator bacteria from humans, animals and food, which analyses data from 2013, says that encouragingly, co-resistance to critically important antimicrobials for both bacteria remains low.

For the first time, EFSA and ECDC have used similar criteria to interpret data.

“Findings in antimicrobial resistance in humans, animals and foods are now more comparable. This is a step forward in the fight against antimicrobial resistance”, said Marta Hugas, Acting Head of EFSA’s Risk Assessment and Scientific Assistance Department.
“The high levels of resistance to fluoroquinolones observed in Campylobacter isolates from both humans and broilers are of concern considering that a large proportion of human Campylobacter infections come from handling, preparation and consumption of broiler meat. Such high resistance levels reduce the effective treatment options for severe human Campylobacter infections,” said Mike Catchpole, Chief Scientist at ECDC.

In a debate in the British parliament over the last week, the government said that it is to look at ways of introducing post-cut stunning in religious slaughter systems.

In the debate in the House of Commons, the farming minister George Eustice said that the government has no plans to ban religious slaughter practices.

However, he said that the Government could look at systems that have been introduced in other countries to increase the welfare of animals in non-stun slaughter methods.

“The Prime Minister has been absolutely clear that there is no intention to ban religious slaughter,” said Mr Eustice.

“However, everyone agrees that we need good enforcement of our existing legislation.”

He added: “In the longer term, we may be able to learn lessons from other countries. Some other countries have managed to accommodate or reconcile the beliefs of Jewish and Muslim communities while having a slightly different approach from us.

“A number of countries, including Holland and France, do have a requirement for a post-cut stun in a particular time scale.”