Meat Inspection Practices in Canada under Fire

Over the last week the meat inspection system in Nova Scotia in Canada received a slap in the face as it was criticised by the auditor general, Jacques R. Lapointe, for being inadequate.

Mr Lapointe said the department fo agriculture is not adequately managing its duty to audit or inspect facilities that process meat or slaughter animals for human consumption.

He said that this failure increases public health risks associated with meat and meat products.

"While inspections of slaughtering activities are conducted as required, we found that departmental audits of slaughterhouses and meat processing facilities are not being done with regularity or consistency, and there is little enforcement of compliance by the facilities with regulations and standards, when problems are discovered," he said.

In Europe, moves are being made to crack down on antibiotic misuse and abuse.

The European Commission sees antimicrobial resistance as a growing problem and because of this, it has launched an action plan detailing 12 concrete actions to be implemented in close cooperation with the Member States.

European Commissioner for Health and Consumer Policy, John Dalli said: "We need to take swift and determined action if we do not want to lose antimicrobial medicines as essential treatment against bacterial infections in both humans and animals."

The action plan has been put into place to prevent resistant bacteria from being transferred from animals to humans via the food chain or through direct contact.

The German ministry of agriculture has also announced a series of measures to gain better control of the use of anitbiotics in livestock rearing and a study in the US by Tufts University School of Medicine calls for a stricter control on the use of antibiotics as growth promoters.

The French food safety authority has attacked moves to reintroduce meat and bonemeal in animal feed.

The authority, while acknowledging progress made in the way the industry is organised, considers that the necessary conditions to allow a safe use of PAPs - processed animal protein as it is now called - have not yet been met.