FSA in surprise u-turn on campylobacter results

The Food Standards Agency has again u-turned on providing its quarterly campylobacter survey results, now stating that it will ‘name and shame’ retailers in its November 2014 report.

The report will announce which retailers and processors have sold chicken that tested positive for campylobacter contamination.

This is the second u-turn on the matter in the last two months, after stating that retailers would not be named until the annual results were published in 2015. The next set of quarterly data will be published in November, with further results in February and April 2015, and a final report in July 2015. Each of these publications will name the major retailers against their summary sample results, with suppliers being identified in the final report.

Commenting on the reports, FSA policy director Steve Wearne said: “A single set of quarterly data would not have been robust enough name retailers. Since then (July 2014), double the number of samples have been collected, which better reflects the situation across the country.”

The final results of the survey will be used by the FSA to show there is a reduction in contamination at retail, after significant changes in practice across the poultry supply chain.

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