Article 18

Without prejudice to the generality of Article 16 and Article 17(1), implementing measures may be laid down, or amendments to Annexes I, II, III, IV, V or VI adopted, in accordance with the procedure referred to in Article 19(2), to specify: tests to assess the performance of food business operators and their staff; the method of communicating inspection results; criteria to determine when, on the basis of a risk analysis, the official veterinarian need not be present in slaughterhouses and game handling establishments throughout ante-mortem and post-mortem inspection; rules concerning the content of tests for official veterinarians and official auxiliaries; microbiological criteria for process control in relation to hygiene in establishments; alternative procedures, serological or other laboratory tests that provide guarantees at least equivalent to specific post-mortem inspection procedures described in Annex I, Section IV, and may therefore replace them, if the competent authority so decides; circumstances in which certain of the specific post-mortem inspection procedures described in Annex I, Section IV, are not necessary, having regard to the holding, region or country of origin and to the principles of risk analysis, rules for laboratory testing; the cold treatment to be applied to meat in relation to cysticercosis and trichinosis; conditions under which holdings and regions can be certified as officially free of cysticercus or trichinae; methods to be applied when examining for the conditions referred to in Annex I, Section IV, Chapter DC; for fattening pigs, criteria for controlled housing conditions and integrated production systems; criteria for the classification of production and relaying areas for live bivalve molluscs in cooperation with the relevant Community Reference Laboratory, including: limit values and analysis methods for marine biotoxins, virus testing procedures and virological standards, and sampling plans and the methods and analytical tolerances to be applied to check compliance with the criteria; organoleptic criteria for the evaluation of the freshness of fishery products; analytical limits, methods of analysis and sampling plans for the official controls on fishery products required under Annex III, including with regard to parasites and environmental contaminants; the method by which the Commission will make lists of third countries and establishments in third countries available to the public pursuant to Articles 11, 12, 13 and 15; models for documents and criteria for the use of electronic documents; criteria for determining the risk that particular products of animal origin imported into the Community present; special import conditions for particular products of animal origin, taking account of the associated risks, information that relevant third countries have provided and, where necessary, the results of Community controls carried out in such third countries. These special import conditions may be established for a single product of animal origin or for group of products. They may apply to a single third country, to regions of a third country, or to a group of third countries; and the conditions governing imports of products of animal origin from a third country or a region of a third country pursuant to the implementation of an equivalence agreement, or to a satisfactory audit, recognising that measures applied in that third country or region offer guarantees equivalent to those applied in the Community, if the third country supplies objective proof in this respect.

← art_17__para_8__text_1 · All articles · art_18__text_1 →

Source: EUR-Lex (Cellar) · retrieved 2026-11-04 · Text as adopted (Official Journal); later amendments are not incorporated in this text.