1 June 2022

Dr David Lynch, a retired Senior Veterinarian of the Irish Department of Agriculture Food and the Marine has been working with the National Authority of Veterinary and Plant Protection (AKVMB) on behalf of the Food Safety Project to prepare and deliver a training programme on meat inspection.

Training started in December 2021 with classroom sessions dealing with procedures on meat inspection, which involves both ante-mortem inspection of live animals before slaughter and post-mortem inspection of the carcasses and offals of these animals. In May 2022 Dr Lynch returned to Albania to deliver practical training sessions in selected slaughterhouses across Albania.

Meat inspection and health stamping is now taking place in all approved slaughterhouses in Albania. This means that the Albanian public can have confidence that meat which carries the official health stamp is from animals which have received ante-mortem examination before slaughter and post-mortem after slaughter from a fully trained Albanian Official Veterinarian.

This action is funded by the European Union and is implemented by the Food Safety Authority of Ireland in partnership with the Irish Department of Agriculture, Food and The Marine, the Finnish Food Safety Authority and Creative Business Solutions (CBS), Albania.