FISHERIES officers are so busy investigating allegations of illegal overfishing that they have been forced to reduce the number of health and safety inspections carried out on boats and related businesses. The decline in inspections comes as the Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI) has warned of a new resistant strain of a harmful bacteria in salmon.

The shift from safety inspections to counting fish began in 2004 when a Killybegs fisherman revealed that trawlers were engaging in massive overfishing. This led to investigations by the government, the Marine Institute and the garda’s National Bureau of Criminal Investigation.

They uncovered evidence of false declarations and illegal catches involving mackerel, monkfish and other threatened species, leading to concerns that Ireland could be exposed to EU fines of up to €40m.

Now it has emerged that the resources devoted to these investigations reduced the number of personnel available to carry out health and safety inspections of trawlers, processing businesses, auction houses and purification plants.

A spokesman for the FSAI admitted that food safety inspections had slipped in the past two years. The number of inspections had dropped from 5,000 in 2003 to 4,118 in 2004. “The figure for last year is up slightly up at 4,400,” he said.

The FSAI’s concern about the decline in inspections increased last week when a study it commissioned showed that a strain of listeria in smoked salmon can remain alive, and poisonous, throughout the packaging procedure and onto shop shelves.

The FSAI’s Alan Reilly said listeria can be a “killer”. It can survive in cold temperatures and withstand chilling. The study identified a single dominant strain that accounted for 65% of bacteria grown from smoked salmon and which was present in products from three out of five manufacturers.

The deadlier 4b class of bacteria, to which humans are most susceptible, was prevalent in 8% of cases.

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