Browsing by Author "Tulokas, Anu"

The objective of the Finnish Hygiene Act (The Act on Food Hygiene of Foodstuffs of Animal Origin 1195/1996) is to ensure the hygienic quality of foodstuffs of animal origin and prevent the spread of infections from animals to humans via foodstuffs. The Act applies to the handling of foodstuffs of animal origin, hygienic quality requirements, control and inspections prior to retail. It also applies in first destinations to the control and inspections of foodstuffs of animal origin imported to Finland from another member state of the European Union. EU approved establishment, i.e. plant according to the Hygiene Act, is a facility or building where foodstuffs of animal origin are manufactured, stored or handled. The Hygiene Act obliges the plants to draw up and implement an own-check system to help make sure that any shortcomings in terms of the food hygiene are prevented. The own-check system consists of an own-check plan and implementation of the plan. The own-check plan is composed of written own-check programmes and working instructions covering all premises and functions of the plant. The implementation of the own-check plan includes bookkeeping of the implementation. The plant has to make sure that the own-check system is up to date, in accordance with legislation and functional. According to the Hygiene Act, the approval of the plants and their own-check systems as well as management of the control and inspections is assigned to the municipal control authorities with the exception of slaughterhouses and adjacent plants. According to the National Food Agency's instructions municipalities send the control results of each plant on a specific assessment form to the State Provincial Offices at least once a year. In this study the control results of the plants and their own-check systems were analysed. Municipal officials had assessed the level of own-check in EU-approved establishments other than slaughterhouses to be between good and fair in 2002. Assessments had been made in 366 plants (29 %) out of 1267. Assessments from the province of Åland were not included in this study. There were significant differences in the assessments between provincial districts and between certain types of establishments. The differences between districts indicate that the official control of the plants may not have been acceptably uniform thoughout Finland. Own-check had been assessed to be significantly better in dairy plants than in plants handling meat or fish products. In addition, results of this study indicate that EU approved establishments follow their own-check plans, for there were no significant differences in the assessments between the own-check programmes and the corresponding implementations.