Work continues on building a consortium of European and international industry and the industry Response to the EU’s awaited but undefined proposed changes to Listeria monocytogenes (Lm) legislation (EU Microbiological Criteria for Foodstuffs Regulation 2073/2005) (CFA News #56 and #57).
Potential changes to the regulation include:
- loss of 100 cfu/g as an upper limit and introduction of zero tolerance/not detected in 25g
- requirements to set shelf life by challenge testing and not durability testing.
This is the most important policy matter for the UK industry, which can demonstrate through hard data (epidemiology, food and environmental sampling) that its approach is much more effective from a public health perspective than that in other major European countries and across Europe, the UK listeriosis rate consistently being half that of Europe as a whole.
Read more at the link above.
FoodWorld 