Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)

It is very important to put on record for everyone that the machines have continued to perform very well when assessed using the performance criteria laid down in the EU regulations. As I remarked earlier, classification was based on a visual assessment of the beef carcass by the classifier. Since the introduction of the mechanical classification of beef carcases, the performance of the classification machine in each beef processing plant has been monitored by regular unannounced inspections by officials from the Department. The classification results of beef carcases are downloaded from a mechanical classification system onto a hand-held computer and the official assesses the result of at least 80 carcases previously classified by the machine. This assessment of classification is carried out using subclasses for each main class. The performance of the machine is determined using the same scoring criteria laid down in the EU regulation for authorisation purposes. As I indicated earlier, by and large, the checks are essentially in balance when both checks are carried out.

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