Review of national food control plans in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and United States

Background

We commissioned Campden BRI to complete a desk study reviewing and comparing the sampling systems of four countries of interest: Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States.

This report aims to provide a qualitative assessment of how competent authorities in each of these jurisdictions perform sampling and analysis of food and feed, their systems for gathering intelligence and other information which informs the need and structure of any sampling and testing programme.

Research approach

The aims of the project were addressed by systematically reviewing for each country:

• The underpinning legislative and regulatory basis

• How official controls and surveys are performed together with methodologies adopted

• Intelligence gathering together with hypothesis generation and testing

• Use of third-party data (for example, generated by food or feed businesses) to provide leverage to quality of outputs from regulatory activities

The objectives were addressed in a three-stage process:

• Web-based literature review

• Interviews with national representatives

• Review of information in the scientific and technical literature

Results

The outcome of the study suggests that there is no one size that fits all as considerable differences in terms of planning and conducting various sampling activities were observed between the four countries reviewed and sometimes even between the authorities within the same country.

Report