Using national microbiological data to set meaningful performance criteria for slaughter and dressing of animals at Australian export abattoirs.

Slaughter establishments in Australia that export meat to the USA are required by the controlling authority, the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service (AQIS), to test carcases under the Escherichia coli and Salmonella monitoring (ESAM) program and to use statistical process control techniques to ensure meat is produced hygienically. However, analysing the ESAM database for E. coli using standard statistical techniques proved difficult because of inter-plant variability and because the vast majority of results were below the limits of detection. As well, it is likely that, in slaughter and dressing, higher than normal microbiological counts can often be random events, for which there is neither logical explanation nor obvious management reaction. One approach to statistical process control is to set performance criteria so that a high proportion of establishments are likely to pass, while prompting individual plants to improve the process if they cannot meet the criteria. A spreadsheet-based tool was developed in Visual Basic in order to interrogate the ESAM database and to identify those plants with microbiological performance significantly different from the norm. The present paper describes how performance criteria for cattle, sheep, pigs and goats and for sub-categories within a species (e.g. sheep/lambs, cows/bulls) were established.