§ Mr. SteenTo ask the Secretary of State for Health what statistics are collated by(a) the Government and (b) the European Commission on incidents of food poisoning in each EU member state; and if he will publish them. [45118]
§ Ms Jowell[holding answer 9 June 1998]: The Public Health Laboratory Service (PHLS) collates statutory food poisoning notifications, data on laboratory confirmed cases of gastrointestinal infection and outbreak data on foodborne illness in humans in England and Wales. This information is published in PHLS's Communicable Disease Report (CDR), copies of which are available in the Library.
The European Union does not routinely collect such information. The Scientific Co-operation Directive has a number of initiatives in hand to identify the sources of communicable disease surveillance data within Member States. The Commission supports the publication "Eurosurveillance" which provides data from surveillance networks in Member States, copies of which are available in the Library. PHLS is part of the "Enter-net" on international surveillance network which involves 15 countries within the EU. The network allows the exchange of information on reported cases of enteric infection due to Salmonella and verocytotoxin producing Escherichia coli between the countries involved. Information on "Enter-net" can be found in CDR.