European officials have issued seven recommendations to improve dairy controls in Ireland and the United Kingdom.

An audit by DG Sante in January and February in Ireland evaluated inspections related to the safety of milk and dairy products. Two recommendations were made.

The Irish official control plan was described by auditors as well-organized. The system of controls over the raw milk criteria is robust, ensuring that non-compliances are followed up and sanctioned when necessary.

However, the system did not ensure that cold stores dealing with dairy products requiring temperature-controlled conditions are approved by the relevant authority. There are 15 registered cold stores which are subjected to risk-based official controls. Irish authorities said these sites will move from being registered to approved cold stores.

The audit team followed up a case wher authorities noted during a routine inspection that a food business had serious shortcomings regarding the quality and traceability of cheeses and process hygiene. The enforcement actions and efforts taken by authorities and the company were adequate to solve the problems, said auditors.

In one bovine holding visited, in the dairy room for the bulk milk tank, part of the wall had been demolished to make space for the tank, which was too large for the room.

In the establishment producing liquid milk products, returned goods from retailers were stored with finished products ready to be dispatched to clients. Returned items were not identified as such and were not properly segregated. In addition, some of them did not have a lot number, making them untraceable, said auditors.

Results from official sampling programs showed that in 2023, Listeria monocytogenes was detected in nine samples of dairy products manufactured with milk that had undergone a lower heat treatment than pasteurization.

UK audit findings
The DG Sante visit to the UK in November 2024 resulted in five recommendations.

DG Sante said some controls were not in-depth enough as authorities hadn’t noticed serious shortcomings in relation to raw materials, HACCP, production and processing, and traceability for cheeses, and the adequate separation and storage of food materials from food waste and animal by products.

Planned inspection frequencies were not reached for the six dairies visited by auditors. The audit team noted that some local authorities had vacant environmental health officer posts that contributed to not meeting inspection targets. The frequency of official control sampling also varied between councils.

Reviewed inspection reports for the establishments visited varied and were sometimes extremely short and with hardly any shortcomings recorded. Inspections in all but one of the companies visited were announced, often well in advance.

In a cheese processing establishment producing only for the EU market, one high risk area was very dirty. It had not been cleaned after production a few days before although this should have been done according to the standard operation procedure. There were also two 40-foot containers in the yard, full of cheeses in various stages of decay with no traceability. The company said all material was classified as animal by-products.

The audit team saw several big cardboard boxes in two plants which contained substandard cheeses, some of which were very moldy and not fit for human consumption but lacked this information. At one company chiller, temperatures had frequently been exceeded and no corrective action was evident.

The UK Food Surveillance System (UKFSS) is a national database for analytical results from food and feed samples from enforcement authorities, as part of their official controls. However, it is only used by around 18 percent of local authorities in England, so does not give an extensive enough data set for use in risk assessment or trend analysis. The Scottish Food Sampling Database gives an overview of risk and compliance.

DG Sante said the certification of milk and dairy products for EU exports is carried out without meeting all the requirements. Also, the procedure for returned consignments does not ensure proper supervision of re-dispatched lots. This could potentially be a public health risk.

In one case, a consignment certified as being delivered under refrigerated conditions was rejected at the EU border as it was at ambient temperature. It was returned to the exporter and then re-exported with no further alteration except for the use of a separate export certificate and changed lot numbers.