HUGH PENNINGTON is celebrating this week. He has just heard that the new Labour Government is to act on all the recommendations of his expert group, set up to look into last year's fatal food poisoning outbreak in Scotland.
The group's report was published in April, and was greeted warmly by the out-going Government, but Labour's election victory was followed by weeks of worrying silence. Then, last Friday, Donald Dewar, Secretary of State for Scotland, broke the good news in the Commons.
But Pennington, professor of microbiology at Aberdeen University, is still far from complacent. A fatal accident inquiry is pending and a criminal trial. Butcher John M. Barr has been charged with "culpable and reckless conduct". While the Pennington report remained unimplemented there was a risk that the current tally of 20 deaths could rise.
"The Government needed to act. The bug has not gone away. In Falkirk in the past three weeks there have been more cases," says Pennington. "At the moment we are relying on the environmental health officers - having had their adrenalin levels raised by what happened - going in more often and being more draconian."
One of Pennington's key recommendations to stop the spread of the bacteria E.coli 0157 was that butchers should handle raw and cooked meats in separate areas to avoid contamination and, wherever possible, employ separate staff. He also wanted butchers to be licensed to ensure that they complied with this requirement, which could cost the trade hundreds of thousands of pounds. Some butchers have already introduced separate handling systems and some farmers too have started to shear dirty cattle of their faeces-tangled coats before sending them to the slaughterhouse. But at present this is all being done voluntarily.
Now the Government is to consult on a food safety licensing system to regulate meat retailers and the final decision will be based, said Dewar last week, "on the overriding concern of the protection of public health".
In his article (above) Pennington also hints at some of the inter-departmental warring which accompanied the setting up of his inquiry by the Scottish Office last year. There were disagreements between the Scottish Office on the one hand and the departments of agriculture and health on the other. "There was a feeling down in London - who are the Scots to tell us what to do with our food safety?" he recalls.
The Department of Health advisory committee on the microbiological safety of food had reported two years earlier on E.coli. "We disagreed with some of the things in their report. There were interesting discussions with MAFF/DoH observers on our group," says Pennington.
His report recommended that raw and cooked meats needed to be handled in different places, and preferably by different staff - it was not enough to allow them to be handled in the same area but at different times. This directly contradicted the advisory group's 1995 conclusions, which were reprinted as an appendix to the Pennington report. "The Government was given conflicting advice," says Pennington.
SIAN GRIFFITHS If you are carrying out research related to food and eating please email The THES on sian@thes.co.uk