Volume 14: Responsibilities for Human and Animal Health
4. Red meat hygiene after the slaughterhouse
Introduction

4.1 After leaving the slaughterhouse, the carcass or part-carcass of a slaughtered animal was subjected to further treatment before it reached the consumer. Butchery subdivided it into smaller portions, joints, and cuts, and simple processing including packaging might follow. Butchery might take place in premises adjacent to the slaughterhouse, or carcasses might be transported to centralised butcheries or to catering or retailing premises, either directly from the slaughterhouse or through meat wholesalers or meat processors. Thus, the treatment and handling of meat and meat products between slaughter and plate might involve transporters, butchers, meat processors, wholesalers, retailers and caterers before reaching the consumer.

4.2 This chapter describes the main elements of regulation that applied to these parts of the food chain. The various stages were regulated by controls which were both horizontal (general) and vertical (specific to a particular food or food group).

4.3 One particular aspect of meat processing which was relevant to BSE was the production of mechanically recovered meat (MRM), because this was designed to utilise the smallest and most inaccessible remnants of meat remaining on the skeleton after the carcass had been dressed. The legislation that applied to MRM and the Regulations which controlled MRM production, together with all the other food hygiene legislation which applied to meat between the carcass leaving the slaughterhouse and final consumption are therefore considered in this chapter. This formed the background against which the Government had to consider the need for action to ensure, for example, that the ban on the use of Specified Bovine Offal (SBO) for human consumption was fully and effectively implemented.

4.4 Like the other chapters in this volume, Chapter 4 examines first the situation as it was in 1986 in respect of meat hygiene after the slaughterhouse, and then considers changes in legislation and administrative arrangements between 1986 and 1996 which were not driven by BSE.

4.5 Before the emergence of BSE, the regulation of meat and meat products was primarily concerned with two basic principles: the need to ensure food safety, by protecting food from contamination that could render it unfit for human consumption; and the need to secure food standards, by ensuring that food when purchased was of the nature, substance and quality demanded and not fraudulently described.