It has not taken long for the State to be reminded of the importance of the recent establishment of the Food Safety Authority. The threat to life of the presence of E. coli 0157 exists again in the food chain, this time in Co Cork, and the source of infection has not been traced. This is the strain of E. coli that is not as prevalent as many other strains but which can, when it occurs, prove fatal. There have been about 30 deaths so far in the United Kingdom and some will die here if mechanisms are not put in place to identify the organism when it is the cause of human illness and to trace the source - usually contaminated meat.
It has taken more time than it should have done to provide the legislation to set up the Food Safety Authority but it is important that the authority be quickly developed and adequately resourced. There is now the real prospect of the State having an independent Food Safety Authority progressively operational from early next year, although it will take significantly longer than that for the authority to win the confidence of consumers both here and in the many countries to which food is exported. It is fair to say that that confidence is at unprecedentedly low levels since the BSE crisis and many reports of adulteration by producers and contamination by processors, manufacturers and distributors.
The new authority will be autonomous under the umbrella of the Department of Health so that it should be more concerned with health risks to consumers than with the needs or wants of the agriculture and food industries. This is as it should be, although the veterinary and other routine inspections of the purity of food products will remain with those agencies that now carry them out. The authority, however, will be in a position to set the standards for these inspections and to monitor the situation to check that the best standards are met.
The new legislation also provides for wider and more severe penalties where breaches of food safety and hygiene rules occur. Additional inspections of food premises are provided for with increased powers for authorised officers. There is provision for fines of up to £100,000 where offences occur. In addition, the authority may serve improvement notices and orders, may close premises and may withdraw food products where there is suspicion of a danger to the public health. It will be able to control and to enforce, and its officers will have powers to enter premises, to seize documents and samples and to have full access to any data or information deemed necessary for effective surveillance.
It remains to be seen who will be appointed by the Minister for Health to the 10-member management board (the current interim authority members will continue to serve until those appointments are made) or what will be the composition of that board's 15-member scientific back-up committee or of the 24-member consultative council representative of consumers, producers, retailers, distributors, caterers and manufacturers with whom the authority is obliged to consult.
But the biggest question hanging over the authority's effectiveness is the budget that will be allocated to it. If it is to monitor adequately hygiene standards throughout an industry worth many billions of pounds a year, it will require a great deal more than the £2 million granted to the interim authority when it was established. Meanwhile, we must still worry about the speedy identification and tracing of outbreaks of E. coli 0157. It can still kill.