Norway food watchdog ensures hygiene standards at Nortura meat plant
Its Gilde plant facilities, in Steinkjer, were spotlighted following a site visit by health and safety inspectors.
Nortura has been instructed by the authority to correct outstanding deficiencies and bring the plant up to standard pending a follow-up audit.
Nortura has accepted the censure. The company said the deficiencies detected by the authority were due to a temporary lapse in hygiene standards and have been rectified in cooperation with the inspectorate.
In its report, the authority stated that it found "serious breaches" of hygiene standards at the plant in Steinkjer during a visit in November. In particular, the inspectorate found substandard hygiene practices in relation to the plant’s animal reception and slaughtering chambers.
"The deficiencies related mainly to poor cleaning standards in certain areas in advance of the start-up of operations by the morning shift. This breached set procedures for cleaning controls, and clearly violated applicable hygiene regulations for this type of business," said Jan Arild Rokke, section chief at the authority’s inspectorate unit.
Substandard hygiene shortcomings included finding remnants of meat, meat juices, bone shavings and dried blood in and around cutting machines.
"We take the inspectorate’s audit very seriously. We conduct daily control checks on our hygiene measures, and this is certainly an area we focus on closely. What happened in this case was a lapse in these checks and controls. We have now tightened our measures and introduced more rigid cleaning and hygiene procedures," said Torben Holm Pedersen, the plant manager at Gilde-Steinkjer told GlobalMeatNews.
