FSA audits of approved meat plants in England, Wales and Northern Ireland: the October 2026 figures

Caveats

How to read these figures

• A plant is counted once. The file dated 1 October 2026 has 823 rows, and one establishment appears twice, identical in every field. It is counted once, so every figure here is for 822 plants. No earlier October file lists a plant twice.
• This is one monthly file. The FSA publishes the latest audit outcome for every approved meat establishment on the first of each month. These figures are the file dated 1 October 2026. The next file will differ, because plants are audited, approved and de-approved every month.
• The plants are the approved meat establishments, not every meat business. They are the slaughterhouses, cutting plants, game handling establishments and co-located minced meat, meat preparation, meat product, ready to eat and cold store operations approved under Regulation 853/2004 and under veterinary control. A butcher, a caterer or a food manufacturer inspected by its council is not in the file.
• England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The audits in Northern Ireland are carried out by the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs on the FSA’s behalf, and they are in the file. Scotland’s plants are audited by Food Standards Scotland and are not.
• The four outcomes are the FSA’s. Its guidance defines them, in these words. Good: “no issues of significance for public health, animal health or animal welfare during the entire audit period.” Generally satisfactory: “no immediate issues of significance for public health, animal health or animal welfare identified on the day of the audit. Any non-compliances identified during the audit period have been corrected promptly.” Improvement necessary: “major non-compliances identified at audit and/or non-compliances during the audit period not always responded to and corrected promptly.” Urgent Improvement necessary: “multiple major non-compliances or critical non-compliance identified during audit visit or interim audit period. Official intervention required to ensure public health safeguards.”
• A non-compliance here is a cell graded Minor, Major or Critical. Those are the FSA’s three grades. The file also records 104 cells as “Observation”, 385 as “Not Observed” and 18 as “Not Assessed”, which are reported as such and not counted. “Not Applicable” means the question does not apply to that plant, so each question’s share is of the plants it applied to.
• The question-level results are each plant’s latest audit, on different dates. They are not one year’s audits. 504 of the 822 plants were audited within the twelve months before the snapshot; the rest earlier.
• The audit date does not say whether a plant is overdue. The file gives one date per plant and does not say whether it is a full or a follow-up partial audit, and an outcome is published only after the appeal period. The FSA’s intervals are quoted on this page for context, not as a test the file can answer.
• The regions come from postcodes. 660 plants were placed in a region by the postcode in the FSA’s approved establishments registers, read against the ONS postcode directory; 70 whose postcode was missing or unknown to the directory were placed by the county or town in the audit file; 92 are Wales and Northern Ireland, placed by country. The regions are the ONS statistical regions of England.
• The question numbers follow the FSA’s workbook. The audit file names its columns Q11 to Q75 in the order of the FSA’s workbook of questions, and the page labels each with the workbook’s own number. The one question the workbook numbers “4” is labelled 4.0 here. Section 3 is six blocks, one for each kind of production, numbered 3.1 to 3.40 in the workbook’s order.
• Nothing here is reclassified. Every figure is a count of the publisher’s own rows and cells.