Meat Inspection History (late 1990s)

The history of the centralised Meat Inspection Service of Northern Ireland from the late 1990s.

The announcement in 1996 that BSE could be associated with a new variant of Creutzfeldt Jacob Disease (vCJD) in human beings had a dramatic impact on the work of the Service. Until this time NI had continued to export beef on the basis of its world-renowned Animal Health Computer traceability system.

In 1996 the UK beef export ban led to a complete re-focus on export markets for beef as exporting premises in NI focused on internal UK markets, particularly the major UK retailers.

At this time the Over Thirty Month Scheme (OTMS) was introduced: all bovines aged over 30 months of age were slaughtered under tightly regulated systems in slaughterhouses dedicated to the task and all parts disposed of by rendering. In the years since 1996 over 100,000 cattle per year (one fifth of total cattle slaughtered annually in NI) have been slaughtered under this Scheme. Thus a part of Service is fully directed towards the supervision of this new responsibility.

In 1997, there was an enhanced focus by UK Government on food safety issues to comply with EEC Regulations and tight procedures were agreed with industry requiring all cattle and sheep to be clean before they were presented for slaughter. A monitoring system on processing standards was also introduced in the form of the Hygiene Assessment System (HAS) all fresh meat and poultry meat premises was scored on a scale of 1 - 100. Under HAS, high scores reflect best operational hygiene practices.