Official Veterinarian Responsibilities
Information on the responsibilities of the Official Veterinarian (OV) in relation to meat inspection.
Responsibilities
The OV has overall responsibility for the following functions:
- health certification of fresh meat
- ante-mortem health inspection of animals
- monitoring of animal welfare at slaughter
- post-mortem health inspection of slaughtered animals
- residue sampling
- seizure of unfit meat or meat not produced in accordance with food hygiene requirements
- health marking of fresh meat
- verifying food business operators compliance with food law, in particular the specific requirements of Regulations (EC) No. 852/ 2004 and 853/2004
- verifying that specified risk material is handled and disposed of correctly by the food business operator
- verifying that other animal by-products are handled and disposed of correctly by the food business operator.
