The main recommendations in the report are that all sectors of the industry must take full responsibility for food safety, and abattoirs, in particular, must ensure that full compliance is achieved at all plants.
Large-scale comprehensive training programmes, already under way, must continue for both operatives in abattoirs and butchers in meat retail outlets.
Monaghan County Council and Tipperary North Riding County Council should employ a full-time veterinary inspector.
The audit should continue in both abattoirs and meat retail premises to verify compliance with the legislation and the advice issued. Updates of audit findings should be issued on a regular basis.
There should be a dedicated audit/special investigation unit, operated by the FSAI, capable of carrying out audits in various sectors of the food chain as and when required, targeting areas where non-compliance is suspected and public health is at risk.
Stringent penalties should be imposed on any abattoir, processor or retailer where noncompliance is found, up to and including immediate closure of the abattoir responsible, prosecution of the owner and censure of the certifying veterinary inspector.
Temporary veterinary inspectors throughout the State should continue to be updated and trained on an on-going basis on the need for total compliance with SRM controls and the role of ante-mortem inspections as an integral part of BSE controls.
On-going communication with the industry should be strengthened, with particular reference to abattoirs to ensure consumer protection is an integral part of these operations. The need for absolute compliance with SRM controls must be established.
All veterinary inspectors should keep a record of all inspections carried out, and these records should be signed.
In the light of the degree of non-compliance found in the domestic abattoirs and the repetition of non-compliance in some plants, local authority abattoirs should be confined to slaughtering animals born after 1996 as an additional consumer protection measure.
The result of the initial audit of 78 abattoirs found that 67 were satisfactory and were graded as category 2 or 1.
This meant that while they were satisfactory, some of them were involved in minor non-compliance with the regulations. These included poor staining of the specified risk material removed from animals, inadequate or unmarked containers for SRM material, poor record-keeping and a failure to split adult sheep carcasses and remove the spinal cord.
However, 11 premises were unsatisfactory with major non-compliance, and placed in category 0. This category involved the finding of spinal-cord material in split cattle carcasses which represented a potential danger to public health.