The food safety control system: the Barcelona case study

Altres ajuts: this research was funded by Agència de Salut Pública de Barcelona (Public Health Agency, Barcelona) and supported by Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB).Official food safety controls seek to ensure that food is safe through enforcing compliance with food regulations and thus protect consumers from suffering any damage caused by food hazards. This study attempted to describe the food safety control system of Barcelona city, where its municipal administration has official competences to implement risk management through the Barcelona Public Health Agency. A single case study was performed through a qualitative content review of laws, regulations, internal protocols, reports or guidelines, among others, related to the food safety controls implemented by this administration. The research was directed by the five-element study model given by FAO and WHO, intended to describe, valuate or analyse food control systems. Data of food control activities, personnel and food establishments from 2014 until 2019 were also added, exception given for 2020 data, which considering the peculiar COVID-19-lockdown in Barcelona, it could significantly mislead the study.In Barcelona city, a single agency control system is in place in concordance with the autonomic and national multiagency system. Food controls are implemented and enforced for all food establishments located in this city based on ten action lines, which include sanitary programmes of control, surveillance and audit, as well as management of food-borne outbreaks, sanitary alerts, denunciations, complaints and irregularities, sanitary authorisations, registries and certificates. This administration owns its official laboratory, which supports all control and surveillance activities of risk management. Moreover, communication and information activities, and technical and refreshing training courses, are given addressed to food business operators and consumers, and food inspectors and auxiliaries, respectively. It was perceived that the Barcelona food safety control system was successfully described by employing the proposed study model, which proved again to be useful for the subject of this inquiry. Since the Municipality of Barcelona has further official competences of control than all Catalan and most of the Spanish municipalities, the administration of this city is in a special position. This paper will enable a baseline for improvement of the Barcelona food safety control system and comparison between other municipalities' systems

L'Autocontrol als establiments alimentaris: guia per a l'aplicació de l'autocontrol basat en el Sistema d'Anàlisi de Perills i Punts de Control Crític

Autocontrol; APPCC; Establiments alimentarisAutocontrol; APPCC; Establecimientos alimentariosSelf-control; HACCP; Food EstablishmentsGuía para el diseño y la aplicación por parte de las empresas alimentarias de autocontroles basados en el Sistema de Análisis de Peligros y Puntos de Control Crítico (APPCC) dirigido a los establecimientos alimentarios, su extensión a los sectores que se encuentran al principio de la cadena alimentaria y la formación de todos los profesionales que actúan a lo largo del proceso de obtención de alimentos. Documento elaborado por expertos en el control oficial y en la verificación y la supervisión de sistemas de autocontrol del Departamento de Salud y de la Agencia de Salud Pública de Barcelona. El objetivo es la prevención de riesgos sanitarios asociados el consumo de alimentos y facilitará a los operadores de los establecimientos alimentarios la aplicación real y efectiva de autocontroles basados en el Sistema de APPCC para producir alimentos seguros.Guia per al dissey i l'aplicació per part de les empreses alimentàries d’autocontrols basats en el Sistema d’Anàlisi de Perills i Punts de Control Crític (APPCC) dirigit als establiments alimentaris, la seva extensió als sectors que es troben al principi de la cadena alimentària i la formació de tots els professionals que actuen al llarg del procés d’obtenció d’aliments. Document elaborat per experts en el control oficial i en la verificació i la supervisió de sistemes d’autocontrol del Departament de Salut i de l’Agència de Salut Pública de Barcelona. L'objectiu és la prevenció de riscos sanitaris associats al consum d’aliments i facilitarà als operadors dels establiments alimentaris l’aplicació real i efectiva d’autocontrols basats en el Sistema d’APPCC, per tal de produir aliments segurs

Report on the establishment of the safe shelf life of certain ready-to-eat, sliced and pre-packaged foods in the retail trade in relation to the risk of Listeria monocytogenes

Listeria monocytogenes; Aliments preenvasats; Comerç minoristaListería monocytogenes; Alimentos preenvasados; Comercio minoristaListeria monocytogenes; Prepackaged foods; Retail commerceAquest informe tracta sobre quina és la vida útil segura en relació amb Listeria monocytogenes de determinats productes (formatges, carnis cuits, inclosos patés, i carnis curats) llescats i preenvasats abans de la venda en comerç minorista.This document is an opinion on the safe shelf life of Listeria monocytogenes in certain products (cheeses, cooked meats, including pâtés, and cured meats) sliced and prepackaged prior to retail sale

Adapting the service portfolio of a public health organisation to shrinking resources Adaptación de los servicios de una organización de salud pública a la disminución de los recursos

This paper describes the review process of the Agency of Public Health of Barcelona's service portfolio in response to the budget cuts introduced since 2010 in the public administrations in Spain. A working group reviewed the different business activities, taking into account their costs and generated revenue and their justification, assessing factors such as the existence of legal constraints, tied funding, explicit demands from the founding administrations and other actors that may be capable of undertaking particular activities. The changes and their consequences are described. The new service portfolio has been consolidated and is considered ratified by the Agency board, which was renewed after political changes. We conclude that this is because it was based on professional consensus and management criteria, which are key for the smooth operation of a public autonomous executive organisation

The food safety control system: the Barcelona case study

Altres ajuts: this research was funded by Agència de Salut Pública de Barcelona (Public Health Agency, Barcelona) and supported by Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB).Official food safety controls seek to ensure that food is safe through enforcing compliance with food regulations and thus protect consumers from suffering any damage caused by food hazards. This study attempted to describe the food safety control system of Barcelona city, where its municipal administration has official competences to implement risk management through the Barcelona Public Health Agency. A single case study was performed through a qualitative content review of laws, regulations, internal protocols, reports or guidelines, among others, related to the food safety controls implemented by this administration. The research was directed by the five-element study model given by FAO and WHO, intended to describe, valuate or analyse food control systems. Data of food control activities, personnel and food establishments from 2014 until 2019 were also added, exception given for 2020 data, which considering the peculiar COVID-19-lockdown in Barcelona, it could significantly mislead the study.In Barcelona city, a single agency control system is in place in concordance with the autonomic and national multiagency system. Food controls are implemented and enforced for all food establishments located in this city based on ten action lines, which include sanitary programmes of control, surveillance and audit, as well as management of food-borne outbreaks, sanitary alerts, denunciations, complaints and irregularities, sanitary authorisations, registries and certificates. This administration owns its official laboratory, which supports all control and surveillance activities of risk management. Moreover, communication and information activities, and technical and refreshing training courses, are given addressed to food business operators and consumers, and food inspectors and auxiliaries, respectively. It was perceived that the Barcelona food safety control system was successfully described by employing the proposed study model, which proved again to be useful for the subject of this inquiry. Since the Municipality of Barcelona has further official competences of control than all Catalan and most of the Spanish municipalities, the administration of this city is in a special position. This paper will enable a baseline for improvement of the Barcelona food safety control system and comparison between other municipalities' systems

Digitalization and official food safety inspections at retail establishments

Authors gratefully acknowledge and thank funding from the Barcelona Public Health Agency (Agència de Salut Pública de Barcelona, Spain) under Grant BEQU-2020-01.This multi-country survey study is the first research to our knowledge exploring the use of a digital environment during inspections in countries of the EU. This study underlines that many CAs in the EU countries already use a digital environment to support inspections at retail establishments. Moreover, the majority of CAs had similar reasons for and results derived from using this environment related to consistency of official control. In the same line, almost all CAs that use a digital environment carry out the same processes during inspections through such an environment. The results of this research provide interesting insights about the utility of digital technologies in official control, showing their possibilities and benefits. Moreover, these results might help policy-and decision-makers of CAs that do not use a digital environment during inspection to implement such an environment and improve the current official food control system.Based on our results, most of the CAs automate processes related to the management of official control. Those processes include the risk classification of food establishments, the selection of establishments to inspect according to their classification and the generation of notifications of follow-up inspections. Differences in applying the internal criteria of CAs for those processes would generate inconsistencies for example of how inspections for certain establishments are prioritized over the rest of establishments or frequencies of follow-up inspections. For instance, electronic work planning and scheduling tools are employed to support healthcare workers to actively remind upcoming events and prioritize visits (Labrique et al., 2013). By automatizing those processes, the responsibility to ensure that official control is performed consistently according to the internal guidelines relies on the criteria pre-established at the digital environment to automate the processes and not on officers' criteria. Likewise, this context may potentially help to prioritize risk-based planning of inspection visits and resource allocation. In view to automate processes according to a harmonized criterion, preliminary work has been developed in the EU to implement digital tools to support officers to automatically classify food when sampling according to the FoodEx2 classification (Nabais et al., 2022).Authors gratefully acknowledge and thank funding from the Barcelona Public Health Agency (Agència de Salut Pública de Barcelona, Spain) under Grant BEQU-2020-01.The opinions expressed by the authors in this paper are solely their responsibility and do not necessarily represent the official views of their organizations. We would like to acknowledge all competent authorities that responded to the questionnaire as well as the support and/or contribution in the revision and/or administration of the questionnaire to Triinu Allika and Kadi Padur (Agriculture and Food Board, Estonia), Tamara Schaeffer, Katja Hellwig and Glen Mans (Netherlands Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority (NVWA), Netherlands), Mireia Colom (Provincial Deputation of Barcelona (DIBA), Spain), Noelia Elchichini, Elena Barco and Paloma Cervera (Spanish Agency for Food Safety and Nutrition (AESAN), Spain), Renate Rehm and Birgit Hogeback (Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection of the State of Lower Saxony, Germany), the Heads of Food Safety Agencies (HoA) group, the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions (SKR) (Sweden), Aivars Bērziņš (Institute of Food Safety, Animal Health and Environment "BIOR", Latvia), Stine Thielke and Vibeke Højbjerg (Danish Veterinary and Food Administration (DVFA), Denmark), and Peter Wend (Federal Office of Consumer Protection and Food Safety (BVL), Germany). Additionally, we also would like to thank Carme Borrell (Barcelona Public Health Agency (ASPB), Spain) for her helpful comments on a previous draft of this manuscript. The authors thank Tomás-Andrés Van Eeckhout Carter for the English grammar review.Digital technologies offer unprecedented opportunities to modernize official food safety control. Shift from paper- to digital-based systems enable recording and reporting data directly in digital format and further analyze and disclose inspection data. Further to this, digital technologies enable the automatization of processes through rule-based instructions, a fact that could positively influence the consistency of official control. Nevertheless, the extent of the use of digital technologies during official food safety control inspections by competent authorities (CAs) of European Union (EU) countries is not known. For this reason, the aim of this study was to assess the level of use of a digital environment during inspections at retail establishments. This was performed by administering a questionnaire to CAs from EU countries. A total of 88 national, regional or local CAs from 15 EU countries responded to the questionnaire. Of them, 62.5% (55/88) used a digital environment during inspections, the majority to standardize data collection and reporting. CAs autotomize processes through digital technologies related to the management of official control and generation of inspection results, but to a lesser extent to automatize decision-making during inspections. Of the CAs not using a digital environment (37.5%; 33/88), technological constraints and lack of economic resources were the two most prevalent reasons for not using such an environment. The use of digital technologies as decision support tools to standardize official controls and improve consistency and efficiency should be enhanced for the benefit of society

L'Autocontrol als establiments alimentaris: guia per a l'aplicació de l'autocontrol basat en el Sistema d'Anàlisi de Perills i Punts de Control Crític

Autocontrol; APPCC; Establiments alimentarisAutocontrol; APPCC; Establecimientos alimentariosSelf-control; HACCP; Food EstablishmentsGuía para el diseño y la aplicación por parte de las empresas alimentarias de autocontroles basados en el Sistema de Análisis de Peligros y Puntos de Control Crítico (APPCC) dirigido a los establecimientos alimentarios, su extensión a los sectores que se encuentran al principio de la cadena alimentaria y la formación de todos los profesionales que actúan a lo largo del proceso de obtención de alimentos. Documento elaborado por expertos en el control oficial y en la verificación y la supervisión de sistemas de autocontrol del Departamento de Salud y de la Agencia de Salud Pública de Barcelona. El objetivo es la prevención de riesgos sanitarios asociados el consumo de alimentos y facilitará a los operadores de los establecimientos alimentarios la aplicación real y efectiva de autocontroles basados en el Sistema de APPCC para producir alimentos seguros.Guia per al dissey i l'aplicació per part de les empreses alimentàries d’autocontrols basats en el Sistema d’Anàlisi de Perills i Punts de Control Crític (APPCC) dirigit als establiments alimentaris, la seva extensió als sectors que es troben al principi de la cadena alimentària i la formació de tots els professionals que actuen al llarg del procés d’obtenció d’aliments. Document elaborat per experts en el control oficial i en la verificació i la supervisió de sistemes d’autocontrol del Departament de Salut i de l’Agència de Salut Pública de Barcelona. L'objectiu és la prevenció de riscos sanitaris associats al consum d’aliments i facilitarà als operadors dels establiments alimentaris l’aplicació real i efectiva d’autocontrols basats en el Sistema d’APPCC, per tal de produir aliments segurs