Food Safety Section
Animalia operates to ensure food safety throughout the food supply value chain. It contributes to the proper drug use in primary production through the provision of enhanced veterinary competence for production animals. In collaboration with farmers, Animalia provides and implements necessary measures to reduce the delivery of dirty farm animals to slaughterhouses. In general, through producing scientific outputs, providing consultancies, risk assessments, reviews, inspections, monitoring, control programs, development of industry guidelines and provision of training to operators and management, Animalia contributes to the production of safe meat and meat products.
Current research projects in the food safety section:
- Hygenea- Risk-based hygiene control in European Abattoirs
- Listware - Software for risk assessment of Listeria in ready-to-eat meat products Abattoirs
- Optimizing slaughter hygiene in poultry
Hygiene Performance Rating for slaughtering of cattle, sheep and pigs
The Hygiene Performance Rating (HPR) protocol is developed by Animalia, Norway. The unique auditing tool for assessment of slaughter hygiene has been used in Norwegian abattoirs for the last 10 years. The HPR evaluate and documents visually each operation on the slaughter line, assessing the factors that can affect the slaughter hygiene. It is based on systematic evaluation of general hygienic practices of each operation. The operators’ hygienic behaviour and risk handling of the carcasses along with routines and management, is assessed and the scores are punched into a web based application.