Food safety achieved through herd management

Most animal-derived food products originate from production chains consisti ng of a series of well-defined, separate production steps. Undesired events affecting food safety can principally occur at any point within the produc tion chain. The principle of integrated food safety assurance from stable t o table has therefore been established. The livestock holding has thus to b e understood as a fix element of the production chain, and the producer has to accept a part of the responsibility for food safety. On a farm, food sa fety can be negatively affected by animal feed (microbiological or toxicolo gical contamination), management (hygiene, stocking density, cleaning and d isinfecting), veterinary treatments (use of antibiotics) and recycling of s lurry. Most relevant practices can be summarised under the standard of << g ood farming practice >>. HACCP programmes as they are applied in the proces sing industries could in principle also be used at the farm level. Influent ial management steps would need to be identified and controlled. This appro ach is, however, still in its infancy at present. Using the current monitor ing systems, microbiological and toxicological problems in food are difficu lt to be identified before the end of the production chain. As the cause of a problem can be found at the farm level, traceability of products through the production chain is essential. In Switzerland, traceability of animals is realised using compulsory animal identification and the animal movement database. Using this link, information on the health status of a herd coul d be made available to the slaughterhouse in order to classify animals into food-safety risk categories. This principle is a key element in the ongoin g discussion about visual meat inspection in Europe and elsewhere.