Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 5 February 2013
690. Deputy Éamon Ó Cuív asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the range and frequency of tests carried out at each Irish meat plant for the adulteration of food destined for human consumption over the past year; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [5107/13]
View answerUnder EU law primary responsibility for the safety of food placed on the market place lies with food business operators. The role of my Department is to verify compliance by the food business operators with this requirement. This is done by a combination of inspection of establishments and by audit on the food safety management systems which operators are required to have in place. These controls are applied at different stages in the food supply chain. It is important to point out that the key controls carried out by my Department, under its contract with the FSAI, relate to food safety.
My Department has a permanent veterinary presence at all its approved slaughter plants. Controls at stand alone secondary processing plants are carried out at a frequency which is based on an annual risk assessment for each plant.
An annual audit of imported products is carried out in each Department approved meat plant. The audit includes physical identity, labelling and documentary checks. This includes product originating both in EU Member States and third countries. In addition, labelling and documentary checks form part of the routine checks conducted by Department officials.
Under the Department’s National Residue Programme, and including tests on bovine samples carried out by processors, some 30,000 samples taken at farm and factory level and covering a wide range of food stuffs are tested annually. These tests relate to microbiological and chemical standards, their primary focus being on food safety. These are fully in accordance with EU testing requirements.
In addition the Product Official Sampling and Testing (POST) programme is a microbiological testing programme on samples taken from Department approved ready-to-eat food, meat product, minced meat and meat preparation plants i.e. added value plants. This is part of the official verification of food safety controls in the plants concerned as provided for in Regulations (EC) 852/2004, 854/2004 and 2073/2005. A total of 1,600 samples are taken annually and the sampling and testing is risk based.
DNA testing is not required under EU legislation and is not generally in use in relation to food production. It has however been deployed in recent times as part of the FSAI’s checks on food authenticity and food fraud control programmes. In that respect it is another new layer to our food production controls.
