Thank you for visiting this site; its purpose is to provide a place for the UK meat industry to obtain information on microbiological criteria regulations - how to comply with the regulation - how to undertake the testing - a place to record results - how to undertake corrective action when the criteria are not met. In addition the site provides information on meat hygiene research that has being undertaken by the Food Standards Agency, and facilitates communication between industry and the Agency.
Information on the current EU microbiological criteria for meat plants that came into force on 11th January 2006 is now available from this site through the links above. Please note however that these notes are currently preliminary drafts. Consequently, the Meat Hygiene and Veterinary Division of the FSA welcomes any feedback that you may have on them. Please address your comments to Mary Howell. Alternatively you can send an anonymous message by clicking here.
The regulations include new criteria for Salmonella in meat and processed meat. Details can be found under the red carcasses, poultry carcasses and processed meat sections that are linked as buttons at the top of this page.
If a sample of meat tests positive for Salmonella, the agency will undertake serotyping of the isolate to provide useful scientific information for national risk assessments and to assist food business operators with their corrective actions. Further information on how to submit isolates for typing can be found by clicking here.
This site is also the home of the Meat Test Results database. The database is a joint venture between the UK meat industry and the FSA. Plants enter their results into the database and ANONYMOUS NATIONAL SUMMARIES are generated. The database IS NOT USED FOR ENFORCEMENT and exists only for research purposes. In the past the database has provided evidence that the initial 10 CFU/cm2 limit for total counts on surfaces was an inappropriate target for plants to achieve. The database was instrumental for the limit being raised to 100CFU/cm2. Over the last 4 years, analysis of database data has revealed that there has been a sustained year-on-year improvement in UK red meat plant hygiene as assessed by bacterial numbers. A poster presentation of this finding can be viewed here. A full scientific paper reporting the finding has been published in the Journal of Food Protection. The download page is here. If you are not an IAFP member and would like a reprint copy of the paper free of charge, please send an email to mike.hutchison@bris.ac.uk.
UK meat plant operators are strongly encouraged to include their plants' test results to the database. Instructions can be found here.
A copy of the original EU commission regulation that obliges the FSA to implement these new revised microbiological criteria from January 2006 is available by clicking here
If a sample of meat tests positive for Salmonella, we ask you to submit the isolate via this site for serotyping. This will provide useful scientific information on a national basis for the agency which can be used in risk assessment. Confidential, isolate-specific information is helpful to plants when undertaking corrective actions because it can provide clues as to the source of the contamination. All costs associated with serotyping are met by the agency.
This page was last updated: Sunday November 25, 2007
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