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Written question asked by Paul Blomfield (Labour) on Tuesday, 1 April 2014, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Thursday, 3 April 2014. It was answered by Jane Ellison (Conservative) on Tuesday, 8 April 2014 on behalf of the Department of Health.

Food: Testing

Question

To ask the Secretary of State for Health which local authorities did not report any food standards sampling in 2012-13 via the Local Authority Enforcement Monitoring System, excluding those that took no samples at all; how many samples each local authority took; how many were submitted to the local authority's appointed public analyst; how many of those submitted to the public analyst were taken as part of a Food Standards Agency-funded project; and how many were paid for by the local authority; and how those figures compare to the equivalent figures for 2011-12.

Answer

The Food Standards Agency (FSA) advises that the following local authorities did not report any food standards sampling in 2012-13 via the Local Authority Enforcement Monitoring System (LAEMS):

Armagh

Birmingham

Blackburn

City of London

Leicester City

Rochdale

Rutland

South Lanarkshire

Swindon

All of these authorities reported microbiological samples via LAEMS in 2012-13 and/or reported food standards sampling through a separate FSA-funded project.

A table has been placed in the Library which shows how many food standards samples each local authority reported via LAEMS in 2012-13, together with a comparison against the number reported in 2011-12 and how many food standards samples each local authority reported through a FSA-funded project.

All of the reported food standards samples were official samples and would have been submitted to the local authority's appointed Public Analyst for analysis. Out of 22,055 food standards samples in 2012-13, 4,387 were funded by the FSA, all other food standards samples would have been paid for by the local authority. By comparison, in 2011-12, the FSA funded 5,072 out of 21,970 food standards samples.

For some local authorities, the FSA funded sampling figure is larger than the number included in the LAEMS report. The difference will be due to the LAEMS reports only including samples for which the analytical result was received from the Public Analyst before 31 March 2013.

Secondary information

Type
Written question
Reference
194640; 579 c180W
Session
2013-14
Related items
Deposited Paper DEP2014-0591
Tuesday, 8 April 2014
Deposited papers
House of Commons
Subjects
Food Local government Standards Testing
Contains statistics
Yes
Link
View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk