Request
Your request was about the following information:
On 27 May 2019 you supplied me with your response to my request under the Freedom of Information/Environmental Information provisions about microplastics in the food chain. Please treat this as a formal request for an update on developments since that date.
For convenience I quote part of your response here:
"FSS is aware of microplastics as an emerging issue including those produced by abrasion of automated feed delivery systems, and although we do not hold any data on microplastics, we are in regular liaison with both Marine Scotland and the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) through the Scottish Government ‘Clean Seas’ Group, as well as marine research organisations."
Does it remain the position that you hold no data on microplastics? If you do now have such data, please supply details in whatever form it is available. If you do not, do you intend to take any steps to acquire such data, on what is an emerging threat to public health, as the use of plastic feeding pipes increases?
Please also supply details of your liaisons with the governmental and other groups listed, including dates of meetings and discussions and minutes and notes recording same.
Response
Food Standards Scotland (FSS) does not hold any data on microplastics in food and animal feed, and is not legally required to undertake routine monitoring or surveillance in this area. There are currently no regulatory standards for microplastics in food and feed and methods for measuring microplastics in these matrices have not yet been standardised and harmonised. However, FSS continues to engage across government and with other UK regulatory agencies to maintain an up to date awareness of scientific developments in this area, and contribute to relevant research efforts where appropriate. We also engage regularly with the Agricultural Industries Confederation (AIC) fish feed Committee to maintain a watching brief on work being led by the International Marine Ingredients Organisation which is investigating methods for improving the measurement of microplastics in fishmeal and the potential for them to be transferred into seafood.
In February 2021, the UK Scientific Advisory Committee on Toxicity of Chemicals in Food, Consumer Products and the Environment (CoT) published an over-arching statement on the potential risks from exposure to microplastics. In this paper, the CoT noted that the lack of appropriate and harmonised analytical methods was a key barrier to assessing the public health risks associated with oral exposure to microplastics (e.g. via the consumption of contaminated food). This concurs with conclusions drawn by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) in their 2016 review of the Presence of microplastics and nanoplastics in food, which recommended the need for further work to develop and standardise methods to enable the detection and quantification of microplastics in food. The CoT also made a number of recommendations for research in this area including the collection of data on microplastics in different food types (e.g. seafood, edible meat tissue and offal, vegetables, fruit, drinks) and matrices (i.e. air, soil, food and water) and the impact of the effect of cooking on the desorption and subsequent bioavailability of contaminants/leachates.
FSS is working closely with the Food Standards Agency (FSA) to take this work forward through our own respective research programmes, and links with other scientific developments in this area. Progress to date includes the publication, by FSA, of a Critical review of microbiological colonisation of nano- and microplastics (NMPs) and their significance to the food chain and a project commissioned by ourselves to review contaminant risks (including microplastics) in wild-caught marine species including fin fish (due to be completed by the end of March 2023).
