Report
FSA publishes final report on meat controls in UK
The FSA is reviewing the existing system of meat inspection in slaughterhouses. The objective is to improve public health protection while delivering a risk-based system for official meat controls.
As part of this work, five projects were commissioned to study the risks to public heath, animal health and welfare from changing the current meat hygiene inspection requirements.
These projects, which have now been completed and evaluated by independent experts, focused on the following areas:
- Post-mortem inspection tasks
- Use of inspection data
- Analysis of roles (such as official veterinarian presence when plant inspection assistants carry out post-mortem inspection of poultry)
- Requirements for outdoor pig processing
- Ante-mortem inspection of young/prime animals and poultry.
The findings of this research included the recommendation that trial projects should be carried out to test the outcomes of the qualitative risk assessments.
The results of consumer research into official controls have also been published. During 2010, the FSA organised a series of focus groups with consumers to ask for their views on current and future meat hygiene controls.
It was found that:
- Consumers expect themselves, retailers and food outlets to monitor safety in the first instance, and have little awareness of the current system of controls.
- On being told more about the current system of controls, consumers were reassured by what they learned.
- Consumers also welcomed the principle of shifting the responsibility for compliance further onto the industry to improve standards.
- There was initial skepticism about potential changes, though there was a range of views on the options tested and some participants were more in favour of reform than others.
- The Agency will consider this new scientific evidence when developing its future policy on official meat controls.
Source: FSA
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