The Ministry of Health has published the “Report on 2024 Audit Activities in Food Safety and Veterinary Public Health“.

In total, 96 audits were conducted in Italy in 2024 on competent authorities: 15 by the Ministry of Health on Regions and Autonomous Provinces and 81 by the Regions and Autonomous Provinces on local competent authorities.

The most critical aspects identified during the audits were:

• the presence of documented procedures, the effectiveness and appropriateness of official controls;
• the organization, planning, and verification of the effectiveness of official controls.

The most common root causes of such non-conformities were:

• insufficient staffing due to lack of generational turnover, resulting from the retirement of official control staff, difficulties in recruiting management-level personnel, the average age of current staff, and the absorption of limited human resources available for other activities;
• excessive frequency of reorganization processes within control authorities and the resulting turnover of management personnel, as well as the elimination/merger of organizational units;
• inadequate assignment of tasks and responsibilities and a lack of awareness of the objectives to be achieved;
• poor coordination (within and between control authorities and other control bodies), including the failure to identify sector contacts;
• inadequate training of official control staff and identification of training needs;
• incomplete operator records;
• non-interoperable IT systems and/or insufficient computerization of activities and/or inappropriate use and/or accessibility by official control staff;
• insufficient availability of material/equipment, IT, and financial resources;
• poor risk categorization of operators;
• poor planning procedures; unspecified/unconsidered risk-based criteria;
• deficiencies in the implementation of procedures to verify the effectiveness of official controls;
• inadequate preparation of documented procedures and/or failure to apply them and/or harmonization;
• inappropriate management of documentation and insufficient dissemination of provisions and instructions;
• lack of an adequate system for managing internal and user communications;
• inconsistent interpretation of regulations;
• insufficient requalification of control systems in response to the rapid and significant increase in European regulations.

The report also notes that there are some areas that remain insufficiently audited by the supervisory authorities, such as:

• national reference laboratories;
• other official activities;
• the right to defense, appeals, complaints, and litigation;
• emergency plans;
• the system for issuing official certifications;
• laboratories performing analyses as part of self-monitoring procedures;
• operator safety;
• test accreditation;
• Alert systems.