Food safety: Iceland improves poultry-meat controls

A report published by the EFTA Surveillance Authority (ESA) today confirms that Iceland has strengthened food-safety controls of poultry meat and poultry meat products. The report was published after a follow-up audit to Iceland from 9 to 14 February 2024.

During an audit on the same topic in 2022, ESA concluded that Iceland needed to strengthen its control system to ensure safe food. The objective of the recent audit was to evaluate the implementation and effectiveness of Iceland's corrective actions.

In today's report, ESA concludes that Iceland has addressed all the identified shortcomings. These included weak animal health controls prior to slaughter (ante-mortem inspection) and weak controls of slaughtered animals for sign of disease (post-mortem inspection) to ensure that meat is safe for consumers.

Food safety in the EEA

EEA law sets high standards for food and feed safety and for animal health and welfare.

ESA is responsible for monitoring how Iceland and Norway implement EEA rules on food safety, feed safety and animal health and welfare.

Consequently, ESA performs regular audits in both countries, while Liechtenstein is subject to a different surveillance system for food safety.
ESA's report can be found here.

For further information, please contact: