From traditional meat inspection to development of meat safety assurance programs in pig abattoirs - The European situation

The main goal of the present paper is to overview, using the example of pigs/pork, the developments in official meat inspection in the European Union that occurred from 2000 onwards. The developments aim at transition from traditional, macroscopic examination of slaughtered animals to a risk and meat-chain based, comprehensive meat safety assurance system. The scientific reasoning for those developments and the generic framework of a modernised system as proposed by the European Food Safety Authority, as well as the current status and future perspectives of related changes, are considered. Also, the main factors hampering the implementation of the changes in practice and possible directions for further work needed to overcome them are outlined.