2019/0481/DK
EC/EFTA
DK Dänemark
  • C00A - LANDWIRTSCHAFT, FISCHEREI, LEBENSMITTEL
2020-01-02
2019-10-07

C00A - AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES AND FOOD

Notification of general flexibility provisions in relation to Article 10(3) to (5) of Regulation (EC) No 853/2004 of the European Parliament and of the Council.

The provision in Article 10(4)(b), see paragraph 3, gives Member States the opportunity to adopt national measures on the construction, layout and equipment of establishments, as long as this takes place without compromising the objectives of the Regulation.

In Denmark, provisions are laid down for establishing small slaughterhouses on agricultural holdings, so that the producers can slaughter animals without having to transport them to a slaughterhouse. This concerns, therefore, slaughterhouses with extremely limited activity, and with full knowledge of all of the animals that are taken to slaughter.

When the animals are in the same agricultural holding that contains the slaughterhouse prior to slaughter, there is no need to establish special facilities in the form of holding pens and quarantine pens at the agricultural holding. The animals are taken for slaughter as required according to needs and capacity, and sick animals are not taken to slaughter, so the likelihood of a need for special pens for animals that have been taken too early, or that have become ill on the journey to the slaughterhouse, is negligible. Nor will there be a need to establish a place for cleaning the means of the transport that has been used between the agricultural holding and the slaughterhouse because the animals walk there themselves and no transport is used.

As only a limited number of animals will be processed through these slaughterhouses, the objectives of the Regulation will be achievable even if there are other activities on the same premises, as long as good routines are drawn up for these activities. Cleaning and disinfection must take place between the various slaughter procedures, and this ensures that production is not contaminated, even if both dirty and clean processes take place on the same premises. Temporal separation and separation of cleaning and disinfection ensure this.

Finally, this opens up possibilities for these small slaughterhouses with limited activity to store abnormal carcasses and offal in the same cooler area as health-marked meat, as long there is suitable labelling and appropriate separation of the two categories. It is logistically possible to keep such separation clear, taking into account the limited nature of activity, and the prospect of having to build another cooling facility, if separation is not clearly observed, is assumed to be a significant motivator.