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Assessment of the supervision of SRM controls in OTM abattoirs and cutting plants

Project Code: M03064

02/11/2010

The SRM Controls model, originally developed in 2004, has been updated to account for
changes in SRM controls, abattoir practices and new scientific data and extended to account for the special features of OTM slaughter. In this study the model has been applied to the slaughter of OTM cattle in GB. The main conclusions from the study are:
• The amount of BSE infectivity entering the food supply from slaughter of over thirty
month old cattle with the current SRM control regime is extremely small, about 0.35
bovine oral ID50 unit per year (range 0.02 to 6) for the whole GB population. Taking
account of the cattle to human species barrier this represents an extremely low level of
risk.
• The main contributors to the exposure are contamination of head meat (41%), DRG in the meat (34%) and infectivity in PNS (25%).
• The exposure to infectivity as a result of failures in the SRM controls (e.g. spinal cord left on a carcase) is shown to be extremely small.
• There is a small contribution from untested or no-test animals entering the food supply, estimated to be 0.13% of the total.
• In the unlikely event that a BSE positive animal was to be slaughtered and not identified, then it is estimated that the total infectivity entering the food supply would be a median value of 2 bovine oral ID50 units (range 0.2 to 36). More than 99% of the total infectivity present would be removed by SRM controls.
• The model has been used to assess the effect of changes to the supervision of animal identity checks. The results show that changes to post mortem identity checks will make little or no difference to the infectivity that may enter the food supply.
• These results demonstrate that the risk of exposure to BSE infectivity is now very low
and the SRM controls are robust. Given that most of the predicted exposure is inherent in the way cattle are slaughtered and butchered (e.g., infectivity in DRG; PNS etc), changes to the supervision of SRM Controls are unlikely to result in any significant increase in exposure risk.

Final report

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