Hygiene Assessment of the Performance of Food Safety Management System Implemented by Abattoirs in Edo State, Nigeria

The aim of this paper is to present a measure of the performance of Food Safety Management System (FSMS) implemented in five municipal abattoirs situated in Edo State, Nigeria. Hygiene status of the abattoirs was assessed by a quantitative interpretation of observations obtained from visual inspection of abattoir’s operations by a 3-member panelist. Hygiene assessment was then confirmed by microbiological performance criteria that were based on standard predetermined guide values. Results obtained from present study indicated that the overall hygienic status (hygienic status of the lairage and processing environment were 17.8 % and 12.9 % respectively) of the abattoirs was bad, indicating that no systems and no written records exist, and lay workers without any training were expected to apply hygiene standards. Results also revealed that microbial safety level was estimated at 0.83, indicating that values of microbiological parameters examined grossly exceeded the safe limit and improvements were needed to be made on multiple control activity of the food safety plan. Values of the hygienic status and microbial safety level, therefore, corroborate that the overall performance of FSMS implemented in the abattoirs in Edo State was generally evaluated as poor.