Green offal inspection of cattle, small ruminants and pigs in the United Kingdom: Impact assessment of changes in the inspection protocol on likelihood of detection of selected hazards

- Risks of changes to the current green offal inspection were assessed.
- Reduction of public and animal health risks through green offal inspection is limited.
- Green offal inspection is valuable in detection of some animal welfare conditions.
- Removal of green offal inspection could be compensated with other control measures.

The changes in detection of selected public and animal health as well as welfare hazards due to the change in current inspection of green offal in cattle, small ruminants and pigs were assessed. With respect to public health and animal health, the conditional likelihood of detection with the current green offal inspection was found to be low for eleven out of the twenty-four selected hazard-species pairings and very low for the remaining thirteen pairings. This strongly suggests that the contribution of current green offal inspection to risk mitigation is very limited for public and animal health hazards. The removal of green offal inspection would reduce the detection of some selected animal welfare conditions. For all selected public and animal health as well as welfare hazards, the reduced detection could be compensated with other pre-harvest, harvest and/or post-harvest control measures including existing meat inspection tasks.