Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the reason that inspection levels have been reduced at meat plants; if he will state the level and numbers of inspections for each of the past three years 2010, 2011 and 2012; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [5108/13]

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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My Department maintains a permanent supervisory presence in approved slaughter plants. Regular visits are made to other Department approved meat plants. The frequency of these inspections in plants other than slaughter plants, which focus primarily on food safety requirements, is determined by an annual risk assessment which is conducted for each plant.

Details of the number of inspections at Department approved meat plants (non-slaughter establishments) in the past 3 years are set out in the following table:

It is important to understand that the Department has been able to reduce the number of inspections at non-slaughter meat plants, where there is no permanent supervisory presence, by moving to a more robust and rigorous targeted system of inspections, based on the risk assessments mentioned above.

The onus of compliance with EU food safety regulations, including traceability requirements, rests in the first instance with food business operators. Food business operators in Ireland are responsible inter alia for carrying out checks to ensure that their ingredients come from approved plants. In meat plants that operate under the supervision of the Department, officials conduct audits on these checks to verify their effectiveness. An annual audit of imported products is carried out in each Department approved meat plant. The audit includes physical identity, labelling and documentary checks. This includes product originating both in EU Member States and third countries. Labelling and documentary checks also form part of the routine checks conducted by Department officials.

Under the Department's National Residue Programme, and including tests on bovine samples carried out by processors, some 30,000 samples taken at farm and factory level and covering a wide range of food stuffs are tested annually. These tests relate to microbiological and chemical standards, their primary focus being on food safety. These are fully in accordance with EU testing requirements.

In addition the Product Official Sampling and Testing (POST) programme is a microbiological testing programme on samples taken from Department approved ready-to-eat food, meat product, minced meat and meat preparation plants i.e. added value plants. This is part of the official verification of food safety controls in the plants concerned as provided for in Regulations (EC) 852/2004, 854/2004 and 2073/2005. A total of 1,600 samples are taken annually and the sampling and testing is risk based.

DNA testing is not required under EU legislation and is not generally in use in relation to food production. It has however been deployed in recent times as part of the FSAI's checks on food authenticity and food fraud control programmes. In that respect it is another new layer to our food production controls.