Date Published: 29 December 2008

Northern Ireland Strategic Committee on Food Surveillance Sampling: 2007 Report

The Northern Ireland Strategic Committee on Food Surveillance is an expert group, established in 2007 to independently evaluate statistical data obtained from the UK Food Standards Agency's Food Surveillance System (FSS (UK)) Database on sampling activities in Northern Ireland.

This is the first report to use data from the FSS (UK) and so provides a broad overview of the microbiological and chemical analysis of food samples. This has enabled, for the first time, a comprehensive insight into food sampling activities within Northern Ireland. It is anticipated that Northern Ireland data provided to the FSS (UK) in future years will enable more focused reports to be produced, which can study trends in certain food groups or premises.

The FSS (UK) database was made available to district councils in 2006 and began operating on 1 January 2007. By the end of 2007, the database held approximately 8,700 food samples.

The Committee did not find any major issues from the contamination of food with disease-causing bacteria.

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