The Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI) has issued new guidance to food businesses on how to comply with stricter EU food-safety legal limits for the control of listeria monocytogenes in ready-to-eat foods.<\/p>\n
The new rules, which apply from today, will oblige food businesses to have robust food-safety controls in place to ensure compliance with the more stringent limit for listeria.<\/p>\n
This limit applies to ready-to-eat foods able to support the growth of listeria, when placed on the market and throughout their shelf life.<\/p>\n
Testing against the stricter limit requires the use of a more sensitive microbiological test method that is able to detect listeria at low levels, if it is present in food.<\/p>\n
The FSAI has advised this “could mean that in the coming months consumers might see more food businesses recalling ready-to-eat foods due to the presence of listeria monocytogenes”.<\/p>\n
Listeria is a bacterium that is primarily transmitted through contaminated food and can lead to a serious illness in humans known as listeriosis.<\/p>\n
Vulnerable people, including pregnant women, infants, older adults, and people with weakened immune systems are at a higher risk of developing severe illness.<\/p>\n
FSAI Chief Executive Greg Dempsey said listeria “continues to be a significant concern across Europe, due to the severity of illness it can cause in vulnerable populations”.<\/p>\n
While the European Union, and Ireland as a member state, operate one of the most robust food-safety systems in the world, it remains vital to continuously improve food-safety legislation to safeguard consumer health”.<\/p>\n
“The new rules will effectively raise the microbiological standards expected of food businesses and better protect public health,” Mr Demspey said.<\/p>\n
The new guidance comes as a number of batches of cooked ham have been recalled from retail outlets due to the possible presence of listeria monocytogenes.<\/p>\n
The hams are from the Brady Family, Tesco Finest and Lidl’s Deluxe ranges.<\/p>\n
Retailers have been asked to remove the implicated batches from sale and display recall notices at point-of-sale while consumers have been advised not to consume the impacted products<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI) has issued new guidance to food businesses on how to comply…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":526855,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,61,60],"class_list":["post-528073","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528073","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=528073"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528073\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/526855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=528073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=528073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=528073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}