Kerry McCarthy – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Kerry McCarthy on 2016-10-07.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what estimate his Department has made of the number of requests made to slaughterhouses with CCTV to release their footage for independent review in each of the last five years; and in how many of those cases that footage was released.

Nicola Blackwood

The Food Standards Agency (FSA) Authorised Officers can and do review CCTV footage with the permission of the Food Business Operator (FBO). Where they have grounds to believe an offence has occurred FSA Authorised Officers can seize footage relevant to the offence.

As part of the regular audit and/or inspection process in slaughterhouses an Authorised Officer may ask an FBO for access to CCTV footage. Whilst the outcome of the reviewed footage will be recorded at a local level we do not keep a national log of such requests and therefore the FSA does not hold a record of this information. Similarly, we do not keep a national record of the number of cases where CCTV footage was released.