In the European Union serological and/or bacteriological monitoring results on zoonoses are to be taken into account for the risk assessment of slaughter pig herds in the framework of the risk-based meat inspection. Furthermore, the European food safety strategy pursues the additional goal to increase herd health. The new understanding of “One Health” (healthy animals and healthy people) and the new paradigm of assuring safe food (responsibility of food producers, prevention, risk-orientation, process-optimization, and continuous improvement) require new concepts for replacing the traditional meat inspection at the slaughter line with a risk-based meat inspection focusing at the whole food chain, and for modern and proactive veterinary diagnostics.

Salmonella serology is used for classifying pig herds in risk categories in several national quality programs. Meat juice is used as test matrix in most of these programs. Two studies were done to compare the salmonella ELISA test results from meat juice with blood serum as a reference. Pig blood and meat samples for these studies were collected in one slaughterhouse. ELISA tests were done with a commonly applied commercial test. In the first study paired blood serum and meat juice samples from 182 pigs were collected and tested in two different laboratories. In the second study meat and blood samples were collected from 470 herds, over 20.000 samples for each matrix.

In the European Union serological and/or bacteriological monitoring results on zoonoses are to be taken into account for the risk assessment of slaughter pig herds in the framework of the risk-based meat inspection. Furthermore, the European food safety strategy pursues the additional goal to increase herd health and animal welfare.

In this study, herds with a high frequency of animals with antibodies against Salmonella are compared to herds with a low frequency of such animals in order to evaluate the relevance of presumed risk factors and/or to identify so far unknown risk factors. A standardised, validated questionnaire was used to document a multitude of characteristics from each farm. Faeces and environmental samples were also gathered with the intention of corroborating the salmonella-specific relevance of the potential risk factors as queried by the survey. These samples were analyzed by means of Real-Time PCR.

The paper describes the experiences from seven pilot projects in Germany on implementing the risk-based meat inspection: analysing the status quo per slaughter house, defining the specific risks of the region of the supplying herds, creating the preconditions for recording and exchanging a meaningful set of data for the food chain information including animal health and welfare criteria, training of risk-oriented logistic slaughter and adding targeted inspection procedures in case of increased food safety risks indicated for entire herds or slaughter batches.

Compliance to good farming practice is a substantial issue to increase animal health and food quality in pork production. In this case-control study, as part of a general framework, farmers were asked six questions via a face-to-face questionaire, in order to determine their motivation for Salmonella control on their farms. The cases were in the so called Category III (n=104) of the German Salmonella monitoring system; the controls were in Category 1 (n=67).

The new European food safety strategy has three main goals: increasing the food safety, optimizing animal health and improving animal welfare. To achieve all three goals by means of a process control, the intensity of the official control is based on a risk assessment by analyzing the so-called “relevant food chain information” from pig herds. This food chain information consists of seven criteria, which are listed in the EU-Regulation No. 853/2004. One of them is taking into consideration existing bacteriological and serological laboratory results. So far, except of the serological salmonella monitoring in some European countries, there is no systematic serological monitoring for any other pathogen from pig herds. The presented paper describes the concepts of a meat juice based “multi-serology” and shows its usefulness as part of the food-chain information.