Food Surveillance Programme

In the UK the Joint Food Science and Safety Group of the Department of Health and the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food have published the results of many analyses for chemical contaminants in food carried out under their Food Surveillance Programme. In many cases the raw data from these surveys are available for analysis. Table 2.1 lists the results of analyses for lead in some samples of cow, sheep and pig kidney obtained in Scotland and England.5 There are clear differences between species and some evidence of differences between sampling locations. What is not clear is the extent to which the variability observed is due to real and consistent differences between species and location or to normal biological variation. 

FEHD, 2003. A routine food surveillance programme. Food and Environmental Hygiene Department, HKSAR Government. 

Epidemiological data are often based on broad populations such as a community, a nationwide probability sample, registries or disease surveillance programmes (Savitz Harlow, 1991 Scialli et al., 1997). Potential toxicants are also monitored in outdoor air, food, water and soil. These measurements can be used to calculate estimated exposure of humans through contact with their contaminated environment. However, such environmental measurements are difficult to link to... 

There has been a huge amount of analytical work on metals such as lead in food. Indeed a large part of the periodic table has been covered. Early work on metals identified that analytical quality assurance is a key tool in the surveillance of food for chemical contaminants. It also led to the development of toxicological standards which can be used to define whether or not surveillance results show there is a hazard to consumer health. Both of these types of approaches are now standard in the best surveillance programmes, whether they are on contaminants or additives in food. 

This chapter will review the way in which veterinary pharmaceutical drugs are used and the controls placed on their use. It will also explain how information from veterinary drug residues surveillance programmes coupled with knowledge of the potential risk they pose can be used to assess the hazards they may present if allowed to enter the human food chain. 

In other nations similar bodies exist for the surveillance of veterinary drug residues in food. Any country that is not a member of the EU, wishing to export meat or animal products into the EU, must have a residues surveillance programme that is compatable with EU legislation. 

The combined results from the surveillance programmes are reported in the joint UK regulators annual Radioactivity in Food and the Environment (RIFE) series of reports. The most recent report is RIFE 11, which provides all information for the monitoring carried out in 2005. ... 

The Environment Agency and Food Standards Agency funded this work as part of their respective radiological surveillance programmes. The authors would also like to express their sincere thanks to our colleagues at Cefas and Harwell Scientifics for their contributions to the collection, distribution, preparation and radioanalysis of samples. 

The activity concentrations provided in this paper have been collated from data that has been published in the annual Radioactivity in Food and the Enviromnent Report (RIFE) reports and the earlier MAFF annual monitoring report series. Most recent data, for the Northern Ireland surveillance programme in 2013, is located in Table 8.5 in RIFE 19, with supporting text in Section 8.3. In the RIFE data tables, if more than one sample is collected and analysed, the value of the radionuclide concentration is reported as the mean of the individual concentrations for that sample. These mean values have also been used in the compilation of the datasets reported here. 

A comprehensive programme of work for the surveillance of the food supply has been established for a long time in the United Kingdom to ensure that contamination of the food supply by inorganic contaminants is kept to a minimum.1 The surveys under this programme have provided a considerable amount of data that are of value for use in estimating the dietary exposure to the various contaminants. 

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