Strengths and weaknesses of meat inspection as a contribution to animal health and welfare surveillance

Meat inspection (MI) is one of the most widely implemented and longest running systems of surveillance. It was primarily introduced to identify meat of animals that is not fit for human consumption. Additionally, MI was progressively recognised as a suitable source of data collection and for monitoring a broad spectrum of diseases and conditions concerning animal health and welfare. For Europe, MI tasks are regulated at the European rather than country level and include a set of activities before and after stunning (ante and post mortem inspection) involving visual inspection, palpation and incisions. Over the last decade, the current MI protocol has been challenged because of its low sensitivity for important public health hazards. We aimed to assess the strengths and weaknesses of current MI protocols with primary focus on its utility in the context of animal health – including both notifiable and production diseases – and welfare, i.e. its capacity to detect cases with an aim to quantify the frequency of animal disease and welfare cases. The consequences of an alternative inspection protocol using visual-only inspection were also explored.