Posted: July 3rd, 2009 - 11:10am
Source: Telegraph

Food manufacturers and retailers seeking to protect their profits, and families taking a frugal approach to their groceries could lead to widespread illness, the likes of which have not been seen for four or five years.
The warning came from Dame Deirdre Hutton, the chairman of the Food Standards Agency, in her final interview before stepping down from the post.
Speaking to The Daily Telegraph, she said: "My worry, as I leave, is that I think we have been pretty successful with food safety over the last five years. But as you go five years without a major incident people think food poisoning has gone away, and it hasn't.
"I worry quite a lot about what's facing us over the next few years."
The last major outbreak was in the autumn of 2005 when poor practice at an abattoir in south Wales led to the second worst incident of E-coli in Britain, which killed a five-year-old boy, put 31 people in hospital, struck 44 schools and involved 157 people.
Earlier this year the FSA's abattoir checking division was severely criticised in a report into the incident.
Dame Deirdre said that since then food poisoning had fallen in general by 20 per cent, but some bacteria such as Listeria were strongly on the increase – particularly affecting old people.