FSA Publishes Review of Meat Controls Research

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.

Sep 7 2011 --- The Food Standards Agency has published the final reports from a programme of research into the modernisation of meat controls in the UK.

The Agency is currently reviewing the existing system of meat inspection in slaughterhouses. The overall objective is to improve public health protection while delivering a more risk-based and proportionate 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, for example, the recommendation that trial projects should be carried out to test the outcomes of the qualitative risk assessments.