Thérèse Coffey – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Thérèse Coffey on 2014-06-12.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many xx-positive cases have been recorded in the UK in each of the last 30 years.

Jane Ellison

The Food Standards Agency (FSA) advises that no Trichinella infection has been found in United Kingdom domestic livestock in the past 30 years. Trichinella infection in food producing animals is controlled by European Union regulations, which are directly applicable in the UK. UK industry routinely tests export pigs as required by their export markets, and all sows and boars, horses and feral wild boar going through approved establishments for Trichinella (which currently amounts to about 3–4 million pigs a year), alongside a FSA programme of surveillance in wildlife.

Monitoring for evidence of Trichinella infection in foxes has been carried out in the UK since 1999. Foxes are tested because they are a good indicator of the presence of infection. There have been only two incidences of Trichinella Spiralis found in foxes in Northern Ireland, one in 2007 and one in 2009, and just one incident of Trichinella Pseudospiralis in a fox in Great Britain in 2013.

In terms of human infections, Trichinellosis in humans is notifiable to the Department and any case that occurs is investigated and where possible the source of infection is identified. There have been no human cases acquired from meat produced in the UK for more than 30 years.

Ten cases of trichinellosis were diagnosed in the UK between 2000 and 2012, including an outbreak of eight cases in England and Wales in 2000. Eight of these cases were associated with the consumption of imported meat products. The remaining two cases were travel related where infection was acquired abroad: one case in 2001, and the other 2010.