Division 1 Sampling frame

United Kingdom

A minimum number of pigs, kept during at least the preceding three months in the Member State, shall be sampled, at random, as follows:

Bulgaria: 192
Romania: 300

Bulgaria and Romania shall take a 10 % extra number of samples, to be analyzed in case some samples excluded from the study for various reasons.

Sampling shall be stratified by slaughterhouses that participate and proportional to slaughterhouse capacity. Each of those Member States shall rank all slaughterhouses according to their fattening pig throughput in the previous year. Thus, they shall each identify those plants that accounted for at least 80 % of all slaughtered fattening pigs.

The total number of pigs and carcasses to be sampled in each of the slaughterhouses included in the study shall be estimated by multiplying the sample size (for example, 2 400) by the proportion of fattening pigs processed in the previous year. For example, if one slaughterhouse accounted for 25 % of fattening pigs slaughtered in the selected slaughterhouses (those representing at least 80 % of all fattening pigs slaughtered in the Member State), then (2 400 × 0,25) 600 pigs shall be sampled. These shall be evenly divided so that 50 pigs sampled in every month, for 12 months. A further example is shown in Table 1.

However, if a slaughterhouse is no longer in production, if a new facility has been opened or there is predicted to be a significant change in plant throughput during the survey, then the estimated throughput shall be adjusted accordingly.

Table 1

Weighing of slaughterhouses for the purpose of allocating the number of fattening pigs to be sampled from each slaughterhouse; calculation of sampled animals per slaughterhouse

Slaughterhouse ID	Number of fattening pigs processed previous year	Percent of total slaughter included in the study	Number of samples per slaughterhouse	Samples per month (/12)
This number must represent at least 80 % of slaughtered fattening pigs in a Member State.
AXD	88 000	17,6	0,176 × 2 400 = 422,4	422,4 : 12 = 36
SVH	25 000	5,0
TPB	75 000	15,0
MLG	100 000	20,0
GHT	212 000	42,4
Total	500 000^f1	100,0

For each slaughterhouse each month, a number between 1 and 31 shall be selected at random. If the randomly selected number is a slaughtering day, for that month, then that day is selected for sampling. If not, then a new number shall be selected randomly. This process shall be performed once a month and repeated as many times as there are samples to be collected at the slaughterhouse. For example, in the slaughterhouse AXD the process shall be repeated at least 36 times to select at least 36 working days randomly. Accordingly, there may be more than one carcass to be sampled on the same day.

As the number of animals slaughtered on a specific day may vary enormously, the random selection of the individual animal shall take place at the slaughterhouse at the date randomly selected for sampling. The given day, the total number of animals must be known, and the personnel of the slaughterhouse shall then randomly select a carcass or carcasses using the randomization sheet which has been provided to them and which has been generated using a maximum that exceeds the highest possible number of fattening pigs slaughtered on any given day in any slaughterhouse in the Member State.

A randomization table may then look as shown in Table 2.

Table 2

Randomization table.

Slaughterhouse	Day of the month	Identity of carcass^f2
The 5th carcass to be processed on the 19th day of that month should be sampled for the survey.
AXD	19	5
	4	2
	12	124
	12	2
	8	59

The following animals shall be excluded from the baseline study:

animals with a live weight of less than 50 kg or more than 170 kg,
animals that have undergone emergency slaughter,
any carcass that is totally condemned.

Annotations

Footnotes

f1: This number must represent at least 80 % of slaughtered fattening pigs in a Member State.
f2: The 5th carcass to be processed on the 19th day of that month should be sampled for the survey.