FSA and industry work to deliver better health and animal welfare
The Food Standards Agency (FSA), in partnership with the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB) and other key industry players, is continuing its work to improve public health and animal health and welfare by ensuring there is robust animal traceability in processing establishments.
FSA programme lead Ramon Romero.
The FSA’s work with the meat industry to design, trial and implement a new system to gather and communicate meat inspection results data began in November 2015.
Since then, the list of conditions to be recorded by meat hygiene inspectors (MHI) in abattoirs has been revised. The new lists have been designed to enable Food Chain Information and Collection and Communication of Inspections results data to be easily converted into actionable information for farmers and the meat industry. The FSA has also introduced an IT platform for MHIs to record and communicate the results.
Currently, the FSA, alongside AHDB and Hybu Cig Cyrmu – Meat Promotion Wales (HCC), is exploring the different traceability and reporting methods in various abattoirs in England and Wales and is looking to utilise and enhance existing processes to reduce the unnecessary use of industry and FSA resources.
FSA programme lead, Ramon Romero, said: “The aim of this initiative is to help us work better with livestock producers and processors to ensure better public health and animal health and welfare. Improving the exchange of accurate and reliable data will allow producers, farmers and the FSA to respond quickly and to act upon it.”
John Royle, chief livestock adviser, added: “The industry has long called for consistent and accurate abattoir feedback on key production diseases and conditions. We applaud the FSA for providing the leadership and adopting a genuine partnership approach to deliver CCIR for the industry.
“We know this will take time to deliver across all processing businesses but the benefits for livestock producers could be significant as we all seek to maintain profitable businesses at a time of much uncertainty.”
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