New online incidents section and strategy published

In the event of an incident, the dedicated section aims to help enforcement authorities and members of the food industry find key incidents guidance and services quickly. It includes the online report form for businesses to notify the Agency if they need to recall or withdraw products from the market. The form can also be used by local and port health authorities to report incidents.

The new section includes: guidance on food safety for farmers, caterers, manufacturers and others; FSA annual reports on incidents that show how many incidents were handled in a year and what action was taken to protect consumers; and details of post-incident reviews, which aim to make sure as much as possible is done to prevent future and similar incidents.

In addition, statistics and analysis information for the period 2000 to 2007 is available, as well as details of international information-sharing forums and networks that work to identify emerging risks and facilitate incident prevention.

The Agency will be bringing more incident information online as it becomes available. This includes incident-related exercises, which are carried out to improve incident handling, and details of other incident reviews.

See the new incident section by following the link below.

The incident prevention strategy plan sets out a cross-Agency programme of work to help deliver the Agency's Strategic Plan target of developing, by the end of December 2010, effective interventions to tackle food safety problems at source before they become incidents. The broad aims are to:

• learn from past incidents to ensure that past mistakes are not repeated
• identify and address the main sources of incidents
• be as prepared as possible in future to anticipate and deal with emerging, and re-emerging risks

The plan, which was consulted on May to August this year, can be found at the link below.

The Agency uses the following definition of an incident: 'Any event where, based on the information available, there are concerns about actual or suspected threats to the safety or quality of food that could require intervention to protect consumers’ interests.'

Incidents fall broadly into two categories:

• Incidents involving contamination of food or animal feed in the processing, distribution, retail and catering chains. These incidents may result in action to withdraw the food from sale and, in certain circumstances, to recall, alerting the public not to consume potentially contaminated food.
• Environmental pollution incidents such as fires, chemical/oil spills and radiation leaks, which may involve voluntary or statutory action (e.g. orders made under the Food and Environment Protection Act 1985).

Further information about the Agency’s incident work can be found at the link below.