Israel fails to complete food additive control in HACCP plan from the poultry industry

The regional official veterinarians will supervise the use of food additives to comply with EU legislation.

The audit tea found that food additives like phosphates or monosodium glutamate were used in meat preparation which is not in line with EU legislation.

Responding to this finding, the authority said it will check and change the procedure sheet (PS) to match the regulation and instruct the official veterinarians (OV).

The regional official veterinarians will supervise the use of food additives by the establishments and the performance of the OVs during the audits and inspection, in order to ensure the fulfilling of the PS and the regulation.

Since the beginning of 2012 there were 12 RASFF notifications (seven border rejections) for poultry meat imported into EU from Israel and all of them due to the detection of clopidol. According to Israeli national legislation, clopidol can be used as a coccidiostatic agent at farm level and detection limit is >1 ppb or >2.5 ppb depending on the laboratory. However, as clopidol is not included in the positive list of substances it cannot be used in the EU and there is no maximum residue limit established/allowed on poultry meat.

The Israeli authority acknowledged this finding and said it was ‘committed too complying’. We will make sure that all birds raised to be slaughtered for export to EU will not be fed with feed containing Clopidol to ensure "zero" residues.

A 2008 FVO audit to Israel on poultry meat and products highlighted shortcomings in knowledge of official veterinarians involved in EU export certification chain, use of antimicrobial substances, physic-chemical tests of water and the approval, conditions and production practices at establishments exporting to the EU.

The action plan following the previous FVO poultry audit has satisfactorily addressed five of six recommendations of the related audit report but the sixth remains to be fully resolved.

 HACCP issues: Audit of HACCP systems is done during official controls. However, this cannot always ensure all the relevant hazards have been identified and taken into account in the Food Business Operators’ (FBOs’) plans, according to the audit.

Source: Food Quality News