EU audits find issues with UK and Irish dairy controls

European officials have published seven recommendations to improve dairy controls in Ireland and the United Kingdom.

An DG Sante audit in January and February in Ireland assessed inspections related to milk safety and dairy products. Two recommendations were made.

The Irish official control plan has been described by listeners as well as organized. The control system on raw milk criteria is robust, ensuring that non-conformity is followed and sanctioned if necessary.

However, the system did not ensure that cold stores dealing with dairy products requiring temperature controlled conditions are approved by the relevant authority. There are 15 cold -registered stores that are subject to official risk controls. The Irish authorities have said that these sites will drop from registration for approved cold stores.

The audit team followed a case where the authorities noted during a routine inspection according to which a food company had serious gaps concerning the quality and traceability of cheeses and hygiene of the processes. The implementing measures and the efforts taken by the authorities and the company were sufficient to resolve the problems, the listeners said.

In a bovine outfit visited, in the dairy product room for the bulk milk tank, part of the wall had been demolished to make room for the tank, which was too large for the room.

In the production of production of liquid dairy products, the returned goods of retailers were stored with finished products ready to be sent to customers. The returned items have not been identified as such and have not been properly separated. In addition, some of them did not have many figures, which makes them untraceable, said the listeners.

The results of the official sampling programs have shown that in 2023, Listeria Monocytogenes was detected in nine samples of dairy products manufactured with milk which had undergone lower heat treatment than pasteurization.

British audit results
The DG health visit to the United Kingdom in November 2024 resulted in five recommendations.

DG Sante said that some controls were not sufficiently deepened because the authorities had not noticed serious gaps in relation to raw materials, HACCP, production and processing and traceability of cheeses, as well as the proper separation and storage of food materials and animals by products.

The planned inspection frequencies have not been achieved for the six dairies visited by listeners. The audit team noted that some local authorities had vacant environmental health officer positions that have helped not achieve the inspection objectives. The frequency of official control sampling also varied between the advice.

The inspection reports examined for the establishments visited varied and were sometimes extremely short and with practically no recorded gap. Inspections in all companies visited unless visited have been announced, often well in advance.

In a cheese processing establishment producing only for the EU market, a high risk area was very dirty. It had not been cleaned after production a few days before, even if it should have been done according to the standard operating procedure. There were also two 40 -foot containers in the courtyard, full of cheeses at various stages of disintegration without traceability. The company said all the equipment was classified as animal by-products.

The audit team saw several large cardboard boxes in two plants containing lower quality cheeses, some of which were very moldy and did not suit human consumption but lacked this information. In a Chiller company, temperatures had often been exceeded and no corrective action was obvious.

The British food monitoring system (UKFSS) is a national database for the analytical results of food and food samples of the application authorities, as part of their official controls. However, it is only used by around 18% of local authorities in England, so does not give a sufficiently widely used data set in risk assessment or trend analysis. The Scottish food sampling database gives an overview of risk and compliance.

DG Sante said that certification of dairy and dairy products for EU exports is carried out without meeting all requirements. In addition, the returned consignment procedure does not guarantee appropriate supervision of the re-Dispatched lots. This could potentially represent a risk of public health.

In a case, a certified shipment as delivered in refrigerated conditions was rejected at the EU border as at room temperature. It was returned to the exporter and then re -exported without any other modification, with the exception of the use of a separate export certificate and modified lot numbers.

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