The interior of a healthy animal is sterile; everything that happens after the knife is subtraction from that perfection. No other food industry begins with so clean a product or can spoil it so fast — one careless hide pull, one nicked viscera, one warm chiller, and a premium carcass becomes a condemned one.
Why slaughter hygiene is regulated to the minute and the degree
From lairage to loading dock, meat safety depends on fixed disciplines: sterilizable knives and sanitizing units, ante-mortem and post-mortem inspection, poultry line times and temperatures, and an unbroken cold chain. HACCP is not optional here — it is the mandated backbone of the whole operation.
What the AGS guideline covers
The AGS Hygiene & Sanitation Guidelines for Slaughterhouses and the Meat Processing Industry are the international normalization of source regulation PHC-C-7, aligned with the Codex Code of Hygienic Practice for Meat (CXC 58-2005), the General Principles of Food Hygiene (CXC 1-1969) and the WOAH Terrestrial Animal Health Code. Its 34 sections include:
- Live animal reception, lairage, rest and welfare
- Slaughter, dressing and evisceration disciplines
- Ante-mortem and post-mortem inspection and disposition of unfit meat
- Poultry line operations with fixed times, temperatures and tagging
- Sterilizable equipment, knives, sanitizing units and the three-sink regime
- Chilling, cold chain, transport, detention and recall
The annexes translate regulation into shift-floor practice: source-preserved temperature, time and pressure tables, red meat and poultry process flows with control points, the three-sink manual cleaning regime, a typical plant cleaning schedule, a six-part establishment inspection checklist and a jurisdictional adaptation register.
Who benefits
Abattoir and plant operators get a complete HACCP-framed code; veterinarians and meat inspectors get preserved inspection rules; poultry processors get their line parameters in one table.
Get the Guideline
Keep the perfection you start with. Download the AGS Slaughterhouses and Meat Processing guideline — instant digital delivery, fully editable Word document, ready for your plant and your inspectors. Like every document in the AGS Technical Guidelines Library, it arrives as a clean, professionally structured file you can rebrand, adapt and issue as your establishment's own controlled document — no waiting, no shipping, no formatting work.
Product: Slaughterhouses and Meat Processing Industry — available as an instant-download, fully editable package from AGS (SKU AGS-05-010).