Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if he will make an assessment of the implications for the risk of hepatitis A entering Britain in imported frozen food of the recent hepatitis A outbreak in Australia thought to be from frozen berries imported from China.

Public Health England has confirmed that there is currently no evidence of human cases of hepatitis A in England and Wales with the same strain as that seen in the Australian outbreak, thought to be linked to frozen berries from China.

The United Kingdom monitors the European Commission’s Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed (RASFF) to ensure that we are aware of any problems linked to consignments of Food of Non-Animal Origin (FNAO) arriving into the European Union from non-EU countries.

In addition, the Food Standards Agency (FSA) has an early warning system in place to identify potential emerging risks from FNAO. If any of the data analysed suggests an increased risk to health from hepatitis A the FSA will advise Port Health Authorities (PHAs) to target their sampling to this risk at UK borders.