Post mortem procedures

Summary

The purpose of this project is to support the risk based post mortem inspection program.

The program started in 2009 and is a three year program to investigate and provide outcomes to achieve a risk based post mortem inspection process.
An alternative, risk-based approach to meat inspection is seen as a way of making the system more efficient in each of the above areas. Potential benefits of this approach to meat inspection include;improved food safety by having dispositions based on whole of supply chain food safety risk or other defined scientific basis and not incising lymph nodes in all casesreduced carcase condemnationsreduced condemnation of carcase parts and offalimproved accuracy of dispositionsmore efficient allocation of inspection resources.

The program involves both a scientific expert panel and a steering committee. In conjunction with this, sampling has been conducted to assess the extent to which traditional meat inspection of adult sheep affects the microbiological characteristics of the carcase surface.

This study aimed to measure the amount of microbial contamination caused by inspecting the lymph nodes of adult sheep carcasses for caseous lymphadenitis (CLA). Surface swabs from carcasses pre-inspection (N= 296) and post-inspection (N=296) were obtained for enumeration of indicator organisms at three commercial  abattoirs. At the scapular site, inspection doubled the probability of detecting E. coli (Pr before=0.35, Prafter=0.67) and increased the expected count of E. coli from 2 cfu/cm2 to 13 cfu/cm2. Inspection at the rumpsite increased the probability of detecting E. coli by 1.1 times (Pr before=0.84, Pr after=0.93) and increasedthe expected count from 32 cfu/cm2 to 45 cfu/cm2. Effects were also observed for Enterobacteriaceae andtotal viable count. The findings show that routine inspection of adult sheep carcasses for CLA has a detrimentalimpact on carcass microbiological traits. (Jordan et al Meat Science 92:837-840).