If Finland's national salmonella control programme were abandoned, the prevalence of salmonella in the pork production chain would increase and the number of human cases would multiply. At the same time, the whole pork production chain and salmonella monitoring would have to be reorganised to ensure food safety as required by legislation. These findings are based on a study by the Risk Assessment Unit of the Finnish Food Authority, which assessed the public health and cost implications of a national salmonella control programme for pigs.
Since 1995, Finland has had a national programme for the control of salmonella in pigs. It aims at detecting salmonella infections and preventing their introduction into the food chain at the primary production stage. The detection of salmonella always leads to risk management measures and decontamination, including cleaning and disinfection, of the production facility concerned. The costs of the salmonella control programme have been borne mainly by the industry, partly through insurance cover. The cost of salmonella control on Finnish pig farms has increased in recent years, which has in turn weakened the financial situation of the farms.
The Risk Assessment Unit of the Food Authority carried out a study on the public health and cost impact of the national salmonella control programme for pigs, commissioned and mainly financed by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry. This was due to the increased costs of salmonella control and the fact that no similar study on the benefits and cost-effectiveness of the pig salmonella control programme had been carried out before. The project assessed the public health and economic importance of the national salmonella control programme both in (i) the current situation and in scenarios where (ii) the control programme would be completely abolished or (iii) the control programme would be based on serological sampling as in Denmark.
With the current salmonella control programme in place, people in Finland rarely contract salmonella from domestic meat and most cases are linked to foreign tourism. On the basis of the national salmonella control programme, the European Commission has granted Finland special guarantees under which meat of foreign origin that is sold fresh must be certified as salmonella-free before it enters Finland. The special guarantees granted will reduce the entry of salmonella-containing fresh pork into the Finnish market. Despite this, salmonella is repeatedly detected in imported pork.
The national salmonella control programme protects consumers well. If salmonella-infected pigs were not removed from the production chain, the estimated number of human cases at current prevalence would be about four times higher. The prevalence of salmonella would also increase over time. If salmonella were present in the production chain at the EU average, about 40–100 people would fall ill in Finland each year. If the spread of salmonella in the production chain was not prevented at all and 20% of farms had salmonella, there would be 400 cases of human illness per year. Abandoning the current control programme would also mean that the European Commission's special guarantees would be withdrawn, which would increase the number of cases of illness caused by foreign pork imported into Finland from about 50 to about 150 a year. There would also be increased requirements for pork exported from Finland.
The main benefits of the current salmonella control programme are the low incidence of disease, resulting in low medical costs and losses due to absenteeism. The main costs are caused by measures taken at salmonella-positive production facilities, which are unevenly distributed among actors in the production chain. In an alternative control programme based on serological sampling, the costs of remediation are not as high, but the costs of morbidity are significantly higher.
If the salmonella control programme were to be abandoned or its basic structure changed, the costs of remediation and decontamination at production facilities would be reduced, but the costs of medical treatment would increase significantly. As the number of outbreaks would increase, so would the number of salmonella deaths. In addition, the pork production chain and the monitoring of salmonella would have to be reorganised to ensure food safety as required by legislation.
Read more:
The Significance of national salmonella control progaramme for pigs (pdf, only in Finnish)
Further information:
Pirkko Tuominen, Director of Risk Assessment Unit, tel. +358 29 520 5090
Suvi Jouotsen, senior researcher, tel. +358 29 520 4341
Leena Seppä-Lassila, senior researcher, tel. +358 29 520 4988
E-mails: firstname.surname@ruokavirasto.fi