European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety Vytenis Andriukaitis has given a detailed response to questions from members of the European Parliament. These were put to the commissioner during his appearance before the committee on 3 April. He dealt with the issues raised by MEPs in a letter to the chair of the agriculture committee, Czeslaw Adam Siekiersk.

On the extent of EU approval for imports from Brazil, he confirmed that 89 beef factories from nine of Brazil’s 26 states were approved and 73 poultry factories from eight states were approved. Between them they supplied almost 576,000t of various types of meat to the EU, including horsemeat. Brazil isn’t approved to export pork to the EU because of concerns raised in audits about the use of ractopamine which is banned in the EU.

Four of the 21 factories under investigation were approved to export to the EU. Three of the four had been actively engaged in supplying the EU between the beginning of January 2016 and 17 March this year when the issue became public. These three companies shipped 1,180 consignments of meat to the EU, adding up to 25,557t of meat. Out of this, 25 consignments were rejected, amounting to 530t of meat, with 24 of these consignments coming from the same factory.

The commissioner advised the committee chair that this factory was under increased surveillance since March 2016 because of salmonella being found in poultry meat. In practice, this meant that all consignments from this organisation were checked by the member state on entry to the EU, including laboratory tests. Positives were discovered between March and 1 June 2016, leading to product being rejected. However, from 1 June 2016 until 9 January this year, all tests were negative, suggesting the problem had been solved according to the commissioner. Between January and 17 March, some consignments were found to be positive and were rejected.

Alerts

In addition to this information, the commissioner also advised that there were 192 Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed (RASFF) notifications between 1 January 2016 and 31 March 2017 for salmonella in poultry. Of these, 76 came from outside the EU, with 46 of them coming from Brazil. That means that 116 of these notifications came from within the EU.

On the enhanced surveillance inspections, 1,424 consignments have been checked at EU borders, with 254 being sent for laboratory inspections. Of these, there were 18 rejections, half of which were for Salmonella, four were for documentation and five others were unexplained.

What now?

The commissioner provided the committee chair with a timeline and an update on the schedule for the EU audits. These began last week and are due to conclude this Friday. He said the apparent infrequency of audits reflected the fact that audits were designed to establish if the control system as a whole was capable of delivering sufficient compliance. This is considered more efficient than visits to individual premises which is the responsibility of the competent authority.

The last audit was carried out on June 2016 and showed that while “arrangements in place appeared adequate on paper, a thorough review in a limited number of establishments showed that implementation was still problematic”. This was across three Brazilian states which didn’t get approval.

Comment

It is clear that the level of scrutiny promised by the EU Health and Food Safety Commissioner has been delivered. It is also evident that there was an issue with a particular factory among those under investigation which, along with the failure of three provinces to meet the EU audit requirements last June, suggests Brazil has work to do in rebuilding confidence in its controls.

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