MANCP Multi Annual National Control Plan Annual Report 2014 1 Contents Executive Summary of the MANCP Annual Report 2014 2 Chapter 1 Introduction 11 Chapter 2 Description and developments in the organisations involved 12 Chapter 3 Enforcement in the food chain 17 Chapter 4 Reports on areas of supervision in 2014 20 4.1 Introduction 20 4.2 Animal health – monitoring and control 21 4.3 Animal health – prevention 26 4.4 Animal welfare 31 4.5 Animal feed 37 4.6 Animal by-products 41 4.7 Meat chain 43 4.8 Meat products 47 4.9 Imports of veterinary consignments 50 4.10 Composite products 53 4.11 Fish, fish products and aquaculture 56 4.12 Dairy, eggs and egg products 60 4.13 Hotel/restaurant/catering and artisanal production 64 4.14 Know what you are buying 68 4.15 Contaminants, residues and GMOs in food 70 4.16 Microbiology 76 4.17 Nutrition and health/special food and drink 79 4.18 Plant health 84 4.19 Plant protection 87 4.20 Organic products 91 4.21 Geographical protection: PDO, PGI, TSG 93 Chapter 5 Audits 97 Chapter 6 NVWA Intelligence and Investigation Service (IOD) 102 1 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY OF THE MANCP ANNUAL REPORT 2014 This Multi Annual National Control Plan (MANCP) Annual Report is the eighth annual report on the Netherlands’ organisation and implementation of official controls on animal health, animal welfare, food and feed safety and plant health. The first MANCP annual report was drawn up in 2007. The most recent MANCP, the plan for the 2012-2016 period, was drawn up in 2011. On the publication of this report, the Netherlands has fulfilled its obligation to publish an annual report pursuant to Article 44 of the Control Regulation (EC) No 882/2004. 1 Developments NVWA improvement plan The objective of the improvement plan is to achieve the structural improvement of the NVWA’s supervision required to equip the Authority for its tasks in an adequate and future-resilient manner. The improvement plan consists of four parts: 1. Certification and Supervision This relates to a review of the organisation of the certification and supervision system. 2. Enhancement of the enforcement capacity This relates to the strengthening of a number of weak points resulting from insufficient capacity. 3. Improvement of the effectiveness of the organisation Structural improvements will be made to the quality and effectiveness of the service to enhance the NVWA as an organisation. 4. Financing The implementation of the improvement plan will be supported by structural additional contributions from both the Ministry of Economic Affairs and the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport, as well as from the business community. Food Confidence Task Force This Task Force was set up in March 2013, in response to the horse meat fraud at the beginning of 2013 that had revealed the need to implement firm measures to prevent the recurrence of incidents of this nature. The Task Force’s objective was to agree on measures designed to increase consumer confidence in food. The Task Force completed its work at the end of January 2015, and was then abolished. The most important result was the introduction of stringent criteria governing private quality systems. These criteria now enable the NVWA to ‘accept’ quality systems and use them as a source of information when performing its public supervision. The stringency of the procurement terms and conditions has been increased and harmonised with international umbrella systems, such as the British Retail Consortium (BRC) and International Food Standard (IFS), for which purpose agreements have been reached within the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI). What is referred to as a ‘fraud module’ is being developed within this context. Wageningen University & Research centre (WUR), RIKILT and the Dutch business community are involved in the development of this module. Food establishment operators will adopt this module in their quality systems when imposing requirements on suppliers that will provide assurances for food integrity and traceability. Although progress has been made and results have been achieved, changes can only really be made when all businesses in the sector actually assume their responsibility for the safety and integrity of their products. Chain liability will then be essential. A number of international chains have already adopted chain liability and the Dutch sectors are expected to be prepared to follow this example. The greatest challenge lies in the change in the behaviour and culture of the relevant sectors. Abolition of the product boards The product boards were abolished on 1 January 2015. The public supervision duties in the animal and vegetable sectors that were assigned to the product boards were taken over by the NVWA and the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO). The NVWA is responsible for the physical controls, supervision and enforcement of the duties assumed by the Authority. The RVO is responsible for the administrative control and implementation. 2 2 Effectiveness of controls The NVWA makes continual improvements to its risk-oriented enforcement strategy in all areas of its supervision. This is also an element of the NVWA’s improvement plan (see above). As the majority of the controls are managed by one central authority, new inspection strategies developed at the central location become available for all areas of supervision. Laboratory capacity for analyses has also been centralised, resulting in one laboratory for food safety, one laboratory for phytosanitary analyses and two laboratories for product safety. The introduction of administrative fines – for the Animals Act, in 2013 – has improved the effectiveness of controls, in particular in the event of non-compliance, and has greatly accelerated the enforcement process. Although insufficient qualitative indicators are currently available to compare the actual effectiveness of the controls with the targets, the first pilot trials with kebab in the hotel/restaurant/catering sector and hygienic slaughter in the meat sector have demonstrated that the use of indicators does yield quantifiable results. This procedure will be developed further. 3 Key data No. of inspections 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 Identification and registration (I&R) 3,708 2,961 2,515 2,521 2,316 Animal heath - prevention 8,641 10,858 7,231 7,340 6,951 Animal welfare during transport 13,378 14,129 11,993 10,240 9,359 Animal feed 981 1,156 2,031 1,564 1,127 Animal by-products 6,668 5,936 5,712 4,307 3,655 Meat 1,803 2,883 2,320 3,022 2,772 Meat products 1,866 3,039 2,016 1,874 2,075 Imports of live animals and animal products 61,596 59,159 59,022 60,938 Industrial production (composite products) 3,340 3,871 5,502 5,361 3,274 Milk and dairy products 1,006 991 993 784 930 Egg sector 1,407 1,064 872 1,028 830 Hotel/restaurant/catering and retail 44,563 44,972 29,578 30,220 36,403 Labelling 1,050 422 178 80 168 Claims for foods for particular nutritional uses 2,207 1,350 1,865 1,734 1,862 Residues and contaminants in food 2,500 3,787 2,090 3,860 7,529 Veterinary medicines 952 689 2,502 1,156 620 Microbiological samples 26,897 18,209 15,184 Plant protection products 2,691 1,652 1,143 1,296 868 Organic products 5,069 5,258 4,064 4,878 4,908 Total 195,439 180,419 178,164 159,245 161,769 Certifications (in hours) 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 Meat 188,727 186,787 203,345 273,425 281,747 Fish 9,918 4,596 9,352 8,982 10,070 Plant health inspections No. of inspections 2012 2013 2014 Results for arable agriculture 38,756 34,752 36,696 Results for fruit and vegetables 101,050 124,379 117,768 Results for ornamental horticulture 177,052 181,854 184,068 Results for tree nurseries and green spaces 14,161 14,146 13,971 Total 331,019 355,131 352,503 3 4 Findings and analysis of non-compliance in 2014 Animal health – monitoring and control • At the beginning of 2014, polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests carried out at two laying hen farms tested positive for low pathogenic avian influenza (LPAI): H5N1 and H5N2. In November 2014, high pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) was encountered at five farms, namely three laying hen farms, one farm with ducks for slaughter and one broiler parent stock farm (H5N8 in all cases). All these farms were depopulated. Three farms were also preventively depopulated due to their contact with or location within a 1-km radius of an infected farm. • Outbreaks of American foulbrood afflicted four bee colonies. • The inspections of milk collection containers demonstrated a new infection with Q fever at one dairy goat farm. This farm had not previously been infected. • The tuberculosis control programme revealed that the majority of the suspected cases and the five confirmed cases of tuberculosis related to contact animals that originated from infected cattle farms in Ireland. Animal health - prevention • The I&R of Equidae continues to be a source of concern, as fraud involving horse passports leads to food safety issues. • It has transpired that the guarantees within the QLL (quality system livestock logistics) are insufficient to provide the necessary assurances for the system. This resulted in the withdrawal of the authorisation of the system and the associated supervision modalities on 1 March 2014. New quality systems were submitted for assessment at the end of 2014. Animal welfare • Compliance during animal transport remains a general point for concern. The percentage of non-compliances increased further from 16% in 2012 to 20% in 2013 and 24% in 2014.