Using national microbiological data to set meaningful performance criteria for slaughter and dressing of animals at Australian export abattoirs

A spreadsheet-based tool was developed in Visual Basic™ in order to interrogate the ESAM database and to identify those plants with microbiological performance significantly different from the norm. The present paper describes how performance criteria for cattle, sheep, pigs and goats and for sub-categories within a species (e.g. sheep/lambs, cows/bulls) were established.