PARLIAMENTARY WRITTEN QUESTION
(14 May 2026)
Question Asked
Asked by:
Mr Clive Betts (Labour)
Answer
In responding to food and feed safety incidents and foodborne disease outbreaks, the Food Standards Agency (FSA) categorises its handling of incident responses at Routine or Non-routine levels.
Non-routine incident and outbreak responses are escalated where it is considered that their successful management requires levels of resources and authority beyond those available for routine incident handling.
In the calendar years 2021 to 2026, the FSA escalated three meat related incidents and outbreak responses to Non-routine status. This was from a total of 15 Non-routine incidents in that period. All three of these meat related incidents were escalated within the calendar year 2023. The following table shows the number of incidents/outbreak responses escalated to Non-routine status for the calendar years 2021 to 2026:
Calendar year | Number of incidents/outbreak responses escalated to Non-routine status |
2021 | 2 |
2022 | 2 |
2023 | 5 |
2024 | 3 |
2025 | 2 |
2026 | 1 |
Total | 15 |
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