Following a total of 170 Rapid Alert Systems for Food And Feed Notifications in 2019, denoting the presence of Salmonella from poultry meat processed in Poland, the European Commission Sanitary Unit for Policy conducted an audit of six primary processing plants, seven further-processing establishments, a regional veterinary laboratory and evaluated the structure of the food safety program in Poland. In 2017 10.5 percent of official poultry meat samples assayed in Poland yielded either Salmonella Enteritidis or S.Typhimurium.
Observations by the audit team included:
- Structural deficiencies in processing plants
- Inadequate cleaning and disinfection
- Insufficient working space
- Failure to impose national standard on low-volume processing plants
- Insufficient supervision and control
- Inadequate food safety surveillance by individual companies operating self-surveillance
- Reliance on non-government employed veterinarians authorized to carry out inspection under circumstances creating a conflict of interest
- Overworking of government inspectors and food safety officials
- Failure to monitor Salmonella and other pathogens using accepted microbiological assay procedures
The problem of contamination in poultry meat parallels the increase incidents of Salmonella Enteritidis in shell eggs attributed to deficiencies in the Salmonella prevention and detection programs in Poland.
As a significant EU poultry producer, shipping product to western nations, Poland will of necessity have to bring production procedures and inspection up to accepted standards. The alternative is that the EU will ban products and supermarket chains will reject eggs and poultry meat from Poland given the statutory requirement for country-of-origin labeling.