Microbiological criteria

Monday 14 June 2010

Regulation (EC) 2073/2005 on Microbiological Criteria has applied to food of animal origin from 1 January 2006. They include carcass testing requirements, including criteria for salmonella for red meat and poultry carcasses.

For slaughterhouses, process hygiene criteria should be used to ensure the production processes are operating properly, specifically:

For red meat slaughterhouses:

aerobic colony count (also known as Total Viable Count, TVC) and Enterobacteriaceae on cattle, sheep, goats, horses and pig carcasses
salmonella on cattle, sheep, goats, horses, pig carcasses

For poultry slaughterhouses:

salmonella on broiler and turkey carcasses

A chapter on the Microbiological Criteria Regulations is included in Part 3 of the Guide to food hygiene and other regulations for the UK meat industry (also known as the Meat Industry Guide, or MIG). Part 3 of the guide, and the full guide, can be found via the links below. See also (External) www.ukmeat.org .

External links The Food Standards Agency has no responsibility for the content of external websites

(External) Regulation (EC) 1441/2007 on microbiological criteria for foodstuffs Read the 2007 Regulation (amending Regulation (EC) No 2073/2005) (External) Regulation (EC) 2073/2005 on microbiological criteria for foodstuffs Read the 2005 Regulation (External) Get Adobe Acrobat reader You may need the free Acrobat Reader to view a pdf

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Microbiological criteria

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