Health carried out 3.920 inspections of meat businesses in Aragon and imposed 43 sanctions

Of the half a thousand samples analyzed during 2018, eleven tested positive for listeriosis.

What controls does a product pass until it is served? This question does not arise many times until a food crisis such as listeriosis occurs. Last year, Public Health carried out 33.830 inspections of food-related establishments in Aragon. Of them, 3.924 went to businesses that process meat and derivatives, similar to the Sevillian Magrudis factory from which the contaminated meat came. In the Community there are 1.983 stores in this sector. As a result of the non-compliance detected in these companies and premises, 43 sanctions were imposed.

These are some of the data revealed by the report of the Autonomous Plan for Control of the Food Chain in Aragon 2017-2020 and which Alberto Alcolea announced yesterday. head of the Food and Environmental Health Service of the regional Executive.

The non-compliance observed during these 'supervisions' can be of three types, explained Alcolea. The first are the structural ones, which address the general hygiene conditions, which refer to the physical structure conditions of the establishment. Other violations are operational, which have to do with the activities carried out. Other failures may come from the product itself, linked to its own organoleptic or physicochemical characteristics, including labeling deficiencies.

Given the non-compliance that was detected, 1.165 files were opened against food establishments, the most common measure adopted, and 665 sanctions were imposed. In the case of businesses that process meat and derivatives, 59 files were processed and 43 fines were applied.

These infractions also led to 52 suspensions of activity in establishments in the food sector, which "are usually temporary until the problem is solved," Alcolea explained. "One was in a meat product, which also caused a general alert, and another in special food and supplements," she explained.