The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine has published the list of meat factories which were guilty of excessive carcass trimming this evening (Friday, December 21).
A total of 1.7 million carcasses have been slaughtered to December 2018, 1.7 million for the year 2017 and 1.6 million for 2016.
To date in 2018 there have been 521 inspections across 32 slaughter plants and 44,332 carcasses have been inspected by classification officers within the department.
In 2017 there were 628 inspections and 56,330 carcases inspected and in 2016 there were 616 inspections on 57,000 carcasses.
On average, each factory has been inspected 16 times to date with an average of 85 carcasses per inspection. The legal requirement is 8 inspections per year on only 40 carcasses per inspection.
The level of non-compliance with the carcase trim specification found is 0.05% of all carcases inspected in 2018. In 2016 the percentage non-compliance is also 0.05%.
No fines were issued in 2017. A concerted campaign by the deprtment, with the co-operation of with Meat Industry Ireland, took place in that year to raise awareness of the standard of presentation and the requirements for carcase dressing.
A total of 28 carcasses were considered non-compliant in 2016.