Almqvist, Viktor
- Department of Animal Biosciences, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
Research article2023Peer reviewedOpen access
Almqvist, Viktor; Berg, Charlotte; Kautto, Arja Helena; Hultgren, Jan
BackgroundOfficial meat inspections at small-scale slaughterhouses and game-handling establishments in geographically remote areas place a heavy burden on the meat-producing food business operators. By performing meat inspections remotely using live-streamed video, instead of on-site, the official control could meet the goals of sustainability, resilience and logistics. We investigated the agreement between the two approaches at pig slaughter. Two official veterinarians (OVs) inspected 400 pig carcasses at a Swedish slaughterhouse, with each pig being inspected on site by one OV and remotely by the other. After a period of 3 to 6 months, video recordings of the remote inspections were assessed again by the same OVs, thus enabling direct comparisons of previous on-site inspections and renewed video-based inspections within the same OV.ResultsAgreement across 22 finding codes was generally very high for both OVs. In all but one case (whether to fully condemn a carcass), for both OVs, Prevalence-Adjusted Bias-Adjusted kappa was well above 0.8, indicating 'almost perfect agreement'.ConclusionsThis study supports earlier findings that reliable post-mortem inspections can be performed using video, and indicates higher agreement between remote and on-site inspections if the same OV performs both.
Abattoir; Agreement; Digital video communication; Official Veterinarian; Slaughter; Remote inspection
Acta Veterinaria Scandinavica
2023, Volume: 65, number: 1, article number: 15Publisher: BMC
SDG2 Zero hunger
Animal and Dairy Science
Pathobiology
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/s13028-023-00678-x
https://res.slu.se/id/publ/122020