Safety assessment of smoked fish related to Listeria monocytogenes prevalence using risk management metrics

One of the fundamental objectives of European food law is the protection of human health. In this framework, the administration has to ensure that there are control measures from “farm to fork”, which maintain product safety in each stage of the food chain. With this in mind, the objective of this paper was to assess the level of safety of smoked fish in relation to Listeria monocytogenes in the early stages of the chain. This was carried out by evaluating the results obtained by the official control of the Valencian region related to the level of implementation of pre-requisites and HACCP. The prevalence of this organism in the industry and the retail stage was also measured. In order to discern whether these values were within the international consumer protection objectives a practical case focusing on smoked salmon was studied. The results showed that the management system in the industry is effective. However, there is a real increase in the prevalence in the samples taken in the supermarket. The ALOP values estimated for smoked salmon indicated that the level of safety achieved is good in a very high percentage of cases, though governments and the different agents in the food chain must continue working to improve and attain new safety goals.