The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has announced the completion of the first stage of a major piece of work that will provide the scientific basis for the modernisation of meat inspection across the EU.

 Having been tasked with researching public health hazards (biological and chemical) which arise from meat production and devising ways to address these through meat inspection, the EFSA is in the process of publishing six sets of scientific opinions and scientific reports, the first of which, focusing on pigs, is published today.

As well as identifying and ranking the main risks for public health, the EFSA experts were asked to “assess the strengths and weaknesses of the current inspection methodology, recommend methods that take into account the hazards not addressed by current meat inspection and recommend adaptations of methods and/or frequency of inspections based on the hazard rankings and harmonised epidemiological indicators” by the European Commission.

EFSA swine report

In the area of biological hazards, the food-borne hazards Salmonella, Yersinia enterocolitica, Toxoplasma gondii and Trichinella were identified as priority targets in the inspection of swine meat at abattoir level, due to their prevalence and impact on human health. Worryingly, the EFSA scientists found that current inspection methods are ineffective at early detection of the first three of these hazards and, more broadly, do not differentiate food safety aspects from meat quality aspects, prevention of animal diseases or occupational hazards.

The EFSA therefore recommended meat inspections:

• Omit the use of palpation and/or incision techniques in post-mortem inspection of pigs subject to routine slaughter because of the risk of bacterial cross-contamination.
• Introduce a comprehensive pork carcass safety assurance framework, combining a range of preventive measures applied on-farm and at-abattoir in an integrated way as this is the only means to ensure an effective control of the main hazards.
• Collect and analyse food chain information (FCI) at herd and abattoir levels to enable a more location-specific assessment of risk.

In the area of animal health and welfare, it was noted that the abolition of palpation and/or incision would lead to a reduction in detection of some diseases but that in cases where several organs are affected, this effect was likely to be minimal. The experts said that palpation and/or incision should be conducted as a follow-up to a visual inspection showing abnormalities.

The necessity of meat inspection, before and after slaughter, as shown in the 2001 UK Foot and Mouth Disease outbreak, in the overall surveillance system for swine health and welfare, was also highlighted. However, the experts said surveillance information is currently underutilised.

In the area of contaminants, dioxins, dioxin-like polychlorinated biphenyls and the antibiotic chloramphenicol were identified as chemical substances of high potential concern in pork. However, it was concluded that chemical substances at the concentrations found in swine meat are unlikely to pose an immediate or short-term health risk for consumers. The experts recommended:

• the development of risk-based sampling strategies that differentiate between farms producing pigs under conditions of fully implemented HACCP-based protocols and with complete FCI, and farms with less stringent quality control procedures.
• the encouragement of ad hoc amendments to sampling plans to take account of emerging substances in the food chain.
• and the inclusion of ante- and post-mortem inspection criteria to identify illicit use of substances and encourage analysis at farm level.