Russia’s recently implemented requirement to test all imported beef for listeria – the only importing country in the world to do so – and Japan and Russia’s ban on Australian poultry imports on the basis of bird flu fears are examples of the increasingly complex and unpredictable world of food safety management.
Australian Meat Industry Council’s veterinary counsel Dr John Langbridge provided a summary of the challenges facing the red meat industry in the area of food safety during a recent Queensland producer field day.
A former senior veterinarian with AQIS, Dr Langbridge said Australia globally had an outstanding reputation for good quality, clean meat. That reputation underpinned a lot of the red meat industry’s marketing messages in export destinations around the world.
However there were a number of influences putting pressure on the food safety management process, either directly or indirectly.
Dr Langbridge said consumer awareness about food safety around the world was “going up almost by the minute,” driven in part by social media.
The most compelling examples of that had been seen in the US where lobby groups had had huge power and ability to influence consumer opinion.
“Within Australia, it has not yet got to that stage, but there is no doubt that their influence is increasing.”
Dr Langbridge told the producer gathering that many countries were now better able to attribute a certain disease outbreak to a certain food commodity –hopefully not meat – and which bacteria had caused the problem.
“As the science only gets better, it will actually help the industry to determine what its real risks are, and how to better manage them,” he said.
As regulatory systems are developed in emerging beef export markets like China and India, however, discovering problems within their own marketplaces, they often tended to think that Australian production systems ‘had the same issues’ that they did.
“That often leads to odd requirements being imposed on Australian beef exports, because they think whatever has happened in China, for example, is happening here also,” Dr Langbridge said.
China had had an issue with melamine contamination in milk in 2008 as unscrupulous operators used the compound to boost protein levels, leading to widely publicised infant deaths.
“As a result, the Chinese imposed odd standards on exporters like Australia, that made no sense in our processing environment, but instead cost Australia money and reduced our competitiveness,” he said.
Similarly Europe more recently had a serious e.coli contamination problem traced to bean sprouts, leading to (unusual) regulatory changes.
“If we trade with those markets, they impose what happens within their own countries on us, even though it is often not appropriate,” Dr Langbridge said.
While Australia had had its own meat-borne disease outbreaks – in ready-to eat products rather than raw meat – they were nevertheless important, and in both incidents, the companies involved had shut their doors.
Out of episodes like the Garibaldi smallgoods contamination episode, had come the development of better human disease surveillance systems, an active system where doctors are now paid to send stool samples from patients who they suspected might have experienced food poisoning for laboratory testing.
“Such testing is designed to try to work out what bacteria was responsible, what commodity was responsible, and what could be done to control that in future,” Dr Langbridge said.
He said it was impossible to absolutely guarantee food safety with meat, because the nature of the product was perishable, and could in fact be abused at any point along the supply chain.
“The way Governments operate in Australia is to accept that a certain percentage of people will in fact get food poisoning each year, but aim to drive down that percentage each consecutive year,” he said.
That process was called the ‘appropriate level of protection.’ It is applied by keeping track of disease data through hospitals and similar channels, and depending on results, going back and re-examining regulations to see if performance standards should be either tightened up, or redeveloped.
“That cycle goes on continually, and a similar cycle occurs with chemical residues, keeping abreast of emerging disease problems, and making sure the regulations, and the industry, are up to speed in dealing with those hazards,” he said.
Dr Langbridge said from the farmers’ perspective, it was important to understand the sector’s own processes, and where the risks were introduced. The industry was learning more about that all the time, in areas like the presence of e.coli in cattle.
The expectation was that producers had good husbandry practises in place, and were managing on-farm risk appropriately. The Livestock Production Assurance scheme was designed to address those risks.
“If new risks emerge that can be better controlled on-farm, there will obviously be discussion between the keepers of LPA and the farming groups to work out what the industry does to minimise those risks, if appropriate,” he said.
That process was reflected in the National Vendor Declaration supplied by the farmer to the meatworks.
The meat processor, in turn, underwent exactly the same process, understanding where the potential risks are introduced, what procedures are needed to control or minimise that, and eliminating them where possible, through the use of a well-designed and managed process.
A well-trained, well-managed and well-informed abattoir workforce could greatly assist in that process, Dr Langbridge said.
Company standards growing in importance
Both within Australia through some of the larger retail chains, and internationally through large end-users like McDonalds, company-specific food safety standards are now frequently being set, often over and above a country-specific standard, Dr Langbridge said.
“That’s tending to drive things now, and in fact many abattoirs now apply more attention to a Woolworths audit than what they might do a country regulatory audit,” he said.
“In reality that’s probably the way such things should be driven, rather than by government. After all, if you don’t make your customer happy, they have the best corrective action of all: they just cease buying your product,” he said.
Dr Langbridge explained that at the point of slaughter, meat inside an animal was actually sterile.
“The trick with the slaughter process is to try to keep it that way: to try to prevent contamination as it is being processed. We aim to achieve that through good manufacturing processes, involving handling, slaughtering and dressing.”
“When you get that carcase as clean as you can and refrigerate it very well, those refrigeration practises are directed at those micro-biological organisms that could in fact cause food poisoning outbreaks. And if they happen to be present (in small, sub-clinical quantities), then that they don’t multiply.”
A challenge arose, however, because unlike Australia and perhaps markets like the UK and South America where consumers tended to cook their meat well, destroying any potential bacteria, that was not the case in all markets.
Some consumers in the US, for example, still preferred to eat their ground beef patties, a relatively ‘high-risk’ item for bacterial contamination, in rare form. Japanese consumers also commonly ate beef raw or very rare.
“When food safety systems are developed, all potential consumers need to be considered,” Dr Langbridge said. “In our case, a lot of those won’t be in Australia, so it needs to be comprehensive.”
He said it was inevitable that the number of hazards and pathogens that would need to be considered in monitored red meat food safety programs.
Residues were starting to become a focus in the US and other markets like China. An example was the growth promotant, ractopamine, which is registered for use in beef in the US and some other overseas markets, but not Australia.
“It is used in pork, which does not seem to create any problems, but it appears that when used in meat, problems can emerge in some sensitive consumers. A number of markets like China are resisting their use, as a result,” he said.
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