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Conference Summary
Northern Ireland Food Safety
Night
John E. Moore*
*Belfast City Hospital, Belfast, Northern Ireland
Suggested citation
for this article:
Moore JE. Northern Ireland food safety night. Emerg Infect Dis [serial
online] 2003 Nov [date cited]. Available from: URL: http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/EID/vol9no11/03-0491.htm
A meeting on food safety entitled “Food Safety: Is It All ‘“Pie-in-the-Sky?’“was
held on June 19, 2003, in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Because Northern
Ireland has a largely agrarian economy with a strong agricultural food
sector, highlighting the importance of safe food production was timely.
The meeting was organized by the Northern Ireland Microbiology Discussion
Group (NIMDG) and was well attended by several local stakeholders in food
safety, including representatives from hospital and public health microbiology
laboratories, the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development of Northern
Ireland, academia, and the food industry. The group heard presentations
from Hugh Pennington, Department of Medical Microbiology, University of
Aberdeen, Aberdeen, United Kingdom, and. Mike Kelly, Head of Food Safety
and Environmental Health, British Airways.
Professor Pennington examined risk assessment in food safety, and discussed
the approach to risk assessment of the oil and rail industries, and compared
risk assessment between these industries and the food industry. He emphasized
that, although science is important at addressing fundamental issues,
an important emerging strategy is the translation of scientific findings
into everyday practice to ensure that food safety is maintained. The attendees
concluded that a greater interaction between microbiologists and psychologists
should be encouraged, to add value to the science and ensure tangible
benefits in reducing the incidence of foodborne illnesses. The group also
learned that differences exist in the incidence of foodborne illnesses
between Northern Ireland and Great Britain (England and Wales/Scotland),
particularly with Campylobacter and Salmonella infections,
and explored possible reasons for such differences, including climate,
lack of consumption of unpasteurized milk, and the social custom of having
foods “well done.”
Mr. Kelly described 42 documented cases of foodborne infections found
in the literature that involved contaminated foods on aircraft and detailed,
in practical terms, how the concept of a hazard analysis critical control
point (HACCP) has been used successfully by airline caterers to reduce
such infections to a rare occurrence.
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