Results of official food control in Austria 2010–2016

The official food control in Austria is based on the National Control Plan, which lays down the details of inspections of food business operators and of food sampling. In order to identify high-risk products and businesses, the results of 472,167 inspections and 209,209 samples were analysed. The rate of non-compliances amongst meat businesses increased significantly from 2010 to 2016, while other businesses showed a significant decrease over the same period. The highest rate in the meat sector was found for ungulate and farmed game slaughterhouses, primarily due to non-compliances with hygiene requirements. Hygiene violations were also the most common problems in the other business categories. Non-compliance with hygiene requirements accounted for 51.5% of all non-compliances. Hotels, restaurants and community facilities showed an exceptionally high Complaint Index (ComIn) for hygiene. The ComIn was implemented to compare the results between different categories by calculating the rate of non-compliances in relation to the control rate; the higher the ComIn value, the more imbalanced the relationship between non-compliances and controls. Utility items showed the highest ComIn for both rejected samples and samples injurious to health. The rate of non-compliant samples increased steadily from 14.1% in 2011 to 16.9% in 2016. In total, 0.44% of all samples were assessed to be injurious to health, 40% of which were due to pathogens. These results underline the importance of improving hygiene in food processing and production.