Meat Hygiene Policy Forum

The Meat Hygiene Policy Forum (MHPF), was launched on 16 April 2002 by the FSA's then Deputy Chair, Suzi Leather.

It provides those with an interest in meat hygiene issues - consumers, enforcers, retailers, and the meat industry - with the opportunity to discuss meat hygiene issues with the FSA officials responsible for policy development and implementation.

We believe the Forum will help us improve our policy delivery by facilitating the flow of information between our stakeholders and ourselves by identifying potential difficulties at an early stage and finding mutually agreeable solutions.

The Forum has a two-tiered structure comprising:

• A Meat Hygiene Policy Forum - representatives from organisations with a direct interest in meat hygiene policy (consumers, enforcers, policy makers, meat industry and retailers); and
• A system of Meat Hygiene Policy Forum Advisory Sub-Groups convened on an ad-hoc basis to consider particular issues in depth and provide the Policy Forum with expert or technical advice.

Membership of the Forum is balanced both in terms of background interest and geographical coverage.

In particular, the FSA sees consumer involvement as crucial to the success of the Forum and is looking forward to welcoming consumer groups to the meetings.

Anyone with an interest in the work of the Policy Forum will also have a chance to become involved in the following ways:

• Advance notice of MHPF meetings and agendas will be given via the FSA website thereby giving interested parties the opportunity to feed in views via an appropriate contact on the Policy Forum or to the Policy Forum Secretariat direct.
• Involvement of those with a specialist interest in meat hygiene issues or technical expertise via the MHPF Advisory Sub-Groups. An example of this are three Technical Working Groups established to assist the FSA in considering a range of implementation issues for the meat sector under the EU Food Hygiene Proposals. The Groups will report their recommendations to the full MHPF meeting on 1 July 2004
• Participating in large-scale conferences to be held every two years.

The Agency is also currently conducting a consultation on EU Food Hygiene legislation which will have implications for the meat sector.