Contribution of Meat Inspection to the surveillance of poultry health and welfare in the European Union

• Published in: Epidemiology and infection Vol. 143; no. 11; pp. 2459 - 2472
• Main Authors: HUNEAU-SALAÜN, A., STÄRK, K. D. C., MATEUS, A., LUPO, C., LINDBERG, A., LE BOUQUIN-LENEVEU, S.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge, UK Cambridge University Press 01-08-2015; Cambridge University Press (CUP)
• Subjects: Animal Welfare; Animals; Birds; Epidemiological Monitoring - veterinary; European Union; Farms; Food chains; Food Inspection - methods; Food safety; Health surveillance; Humans; Hygiene; Life Sciences; Meat Inspection and poultry health; Modernization; Original Papers; Poultry; Poultry Diseases; Public Health; poultry; Animal welfare; disease surveillance; Meat Inspection
• ISSN: 0950-2688; 1469-4409; 1469-4409
• DOI: 10.1017/S0950268814003379

In the European Union, Meat Inspection (MI) aims to protect public health by ensuring that minimal hazardous material enters in the food chain. It also contributes to the detection and monitoring of animal diseases and welfare problems but its utility for animal surveillance has been assessed partially for some diseases only. Using the example of poultry production, we propose a complete assessment of MI as a health surveillance system. MI allows a long-term syndromic surveillance of poultry health but its contribution is lowered by a lack of data standardization, analysis and reporting. In addition, the probability of case detection for 20 diseases and welfare conditions was quantified using a scenario tree modelling approach, with input data based on literature and expert opinion. The sensitivity of MI appeared to be very high to detect most of the conditions studied because MI is performed at batch level and applied to a high number of birds per batch.