News Meat
Slaughterhouse must take into account NVWA shortage
When concluding agreements with customers, slaughterhouses must take into account the fact that NVWA is struggling with large and structural shortages of inspection personnel. As a result, companies may not be able to deliver the products that were agreed to deliver.
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This is shown by a statement of the Board of Appeal for the business community in a case involving meat company Compaxo against the NVWA (officially against 'the state of the Netherlands').
Said statement is a follow-up statement to a previously raised issue by Campaxo and also other meat companies.
Compaxo's lawyer argued that meat companies or other companies that deal with inspection services can always assume that when there are mandatory inspections, capacity must always be available.
Too short-sighted
The Appeals Board finds this too simplistic. According to her, Compaxo should also have taken into account the risk that there might not be enough inspection capacity when concluding contracts with customers. The colleague considers it positive that the meat company had requested additional inspection capacity months in advance, and that it was possibly willing to pay extra for a guaranteed delivery of the requested capacity. However, according to the council, this is no reason to simply assume that the NVWA actually delivers. The regulator has been struggling with a shortage of medical examiners and assistants for years. Compaxo should also not have expected that the NVWA would take staff away from other companies and place them with it.