DEVELOPMENT OF LEGISLATION ON MOBILE SLAUGHTERHOUSE FOR RURAL POULTRY MEAT PRODUCTION

The Regulation EC/853/2004 shall not be applied in relation to the direct supply, by the producer, of small quantities of meat from poultry and lagomorphs slaughtered on the farm, to the final consumer. The exemption is mainly on the limited requirements of the slaughterhouse that are not defined as "approved establishments". In Umbria Region, there is an increasing interest in free range local poultry production that is performed in small farms that produce less than 10,000 birds per year. The lack of slaughterhouses strongly discourage the producers and forced them to limit the production to less than 500 birds per year. A possible solution to bring access to inspected slaughtering to such a community and improve local production could be a mobile slaughterhouse, equipped on a small truck that directly reaches the different poultry farms. The development of new structures forced Local Authorities to point out rules to allow the activity of these slaughtering facilities not approved, and setting up specific procedures. The aim of this work is to provide the first attempt in Italy in the development of a specific legislation on mobile slaughterhouse for small quantities of poultry meat production. With reference to mobile slaughterhouse for poultry meat production the Regional Authority of Umbria Region allow the use of one mobile slaughterhouse that work for different farms. The food business operator and each farmers that intent to apply the slaughterhouse have to provide a notification to the Local Authorities. Furthermore the slaughterhouse structurally has to fulfill several requisites, set by Reg EC/853/2004 (Annex II, Capter I, III and IV point 1) and by Local Authority. In particular, stunning, bleeding and plucking have to be performed separately from evisceration. Stunning have to be performed according to Reg EC/1099/2009. Meat chilling and storage have to be performed in specific structures at slaughterhouse or at farm level. Animal by-products have to be managed according to Reg EC/1774/2002. Cleaning and disinfection of the structure and equipments have to be performed at the end of each slaughtering session in the farm level or in a specific staging area of the truck. Meat have to be labeled with the day of slaughtering, farm code and farm address. A proper traceability system have to be set up. Not all the poultry farms have similar characteristics and an evaluation of the better farm site for slaughtering, as well as the water supply and wastewater management, are needed. A rotation of the slaughtering days among the farms have to be suggested. The microbiological criteria set by Reg EC/2073/2005 for such slaughtering system need further evaluation.