About 10% of UK plants breach BSE rules, regulator finds
UK - About 10 per cent of British meat cutting plants, or 47 out of 465, are not following the regulations on bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), according to a survey by the country's food regulator.
13 December 2006
2 minute read
The breeches of law means that some illegal animal parts, those with material from the spinal cord deemed to be risky, has ended up in the food chain, the Food Standards Agency (FSA) said in releasing the survey results.
The survey indicates that a significant segment of the industry is not taking the proper precautions to ensure beef parts judged to be of high BSE risk do not end up in the food chain. The EU's 10-year-old ban on UK beef exports came to an end earlier this year on the condition that the UK maintain strict safety controls in place.
The survey of all beef processing plants in the UK was launched after the FSA discovered in July that a cutting plant had sent meat to a rendering plant that included bovine vertebral column specified risk material (SRM) from carcasses of cattle aged between 24 months to 30 months. Tallow and pet food containing some of the meat was exported, resulting in a EU-wide alert.
More recently, in November, Dunbia in Northern Ireland had to issue a recall thousands of cuts of meat products after finding that a cow over the age of thirty months has entered the food chain without being tested for BSE. The incident occurred because of human error when a 54-month-old cow was wrongly identified as being less than 30 months old.
Source: Food Production Daily
