Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what estimate she has made of the number of scheduled tests for salmonella in eggs that were (a) carried out behind schedule and (b) not carried out.

National Control Plan official sampling is done annually as per legislative requirements. The British Egg Industry Council (BEIC) are an approved Industry Control Body for their own assurance scheme members and their annual official sampling is carried out by their auditors NSF International. Non-BEIC producers are sampled by the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA).

In 2018, APHA completed all official sampling on non-BEIC laying farms in the timescales required. 2019 sampling for non-BEIC laying farms is also on track for completion within the timescales required.

As part of routine regulatory inspections APHA inspectors audit each egg producer’s salmonella sampling records in order to review operator sampling. Where late or missed sampling is identified a penalty notice will be issued. In addition, where there is no clear current test present at the time of the inspection, the inspector will immediately take the appropriate samples for testing and will serve a notice applying restrictions to the eggs pending a clear test result.

The number of penalty notices that have been raised against producers in England are:

01/06/16-31/05/17 - 30.

01/06/17-31/05/18 - 44.

01/06/18-31/05/19 - 35.