§ Mr. MartlewTo ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what action he has taken on the recommendation by the Agriculture Committee that his16W Department should develop a monitoring system at key food outlets to give an indication of day-to-day levels of radiocativity in major foodstuffs.
§ Mr. SoamesThe Ministry's priority remains the monitoring of sheep at the point of production to ensure that contaminated animals or produce are identified and prevented from entering the food chain.
To supplement these live monitoring arrangements, the Department operates a programme of monitoring at a number of slaughterhouses which take sheep from the Cumbria restricted area. In addition, our terrestrial radioactivity monitoring programme involves the monitoring of milk at dairies covering 27 counties in England and Wales. The results of this monitoring are published regularly and copies are placed in the Libraries of the House.
Also, monitoring programmes for radioactivity in food operated by various bodies have been published in a compendium "Programmes to Monitor Radioactivity in Food: Food Surveillance Paper No. 28, HMSO, 1990". This report gives an indication of the further extensive monitoring of food that currently takes place.