Michael Fitzmaurice (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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405. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the regularity with which officials carry out spot checks on carcase grades on a given day to ensure that the mechanical grading machine is working within its required parameters; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [10887/19]

Michael Creed (Cork North West, Fine Gael)
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Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2017/1184 of 20 April 2017 governs the monitoring of carcase classification. It specifies that on-the-spot checks shall be carried out in all slaughterhouses applying compulsory carcass classification and that the performance of the grading methods shall be checked on the spot and without prior warning by a body independent of the slaughterhouses, the classification agencies and the qualified classifiers.

In 2018, my Department conducted almost 550 unannounced, on-the-spot inspections in 32 factories on classification and carcase presentation. There were 616 inspections in 2016 and 628 in 2017. There were on average of 20 inspections per factory per year, which significantly exceeds the legal minimum requirement of 8 inspections per year. At each inspection 100 carcases on average are checked in one time period; the majority in sequence on the slaughter line with the remainder in the chills.