Division (a) Sampling design:

When designing their sampling plan at retail level, Member States shall take into account EFSA technical specifications on randomised sampling for harmonised monitoring of antimicrobial resistance in zoonotic and commensal bacteria^f1.

Member States shall ensure a proportionate stratified sampling of samples of the fresh meat taken at retail without pre-selecting samples based on the origin of the food, with a proportional allocation of the number of samples to the population of the geographical region. They shall also ensure an even distribution over the monitoring year of the samples of fresh meat and, to the extent possible, a randomisation of the sampling days of each month. The batches to be sampled on a given day shall be randomly selected.