Signs and declarations

Jon Snowdon highlights what a carcass inspection should entail to ensure deer meat is fit to enter the food chain

- Jon Snowdon

The game hygiene regulations came into force in the UK in January 2006, two years after European legislation. They state that any person harvesting wild deer for the food chain should be inspected by a “suitably knowledgeable person”. The ‘trained hunter’ qualification was introduced to formally facilitate this, but it does not apply if the meat harvested is for personal consumption.

The inspection starts when a hunter is about to cull a deer. Any abnormality seen on the live deer – before the shot – has to despatched. Closer inspection once the animal is dead can confirm if any injury is infected and serious enough to stop that carcass being eaten. Septic wounds crop up now and again and that would certainly stop the carcass entering the food chain. In such circumstances, it is likely the whole carcass is septic. Septicaemia is serious and kills unless diagnosed and treated quickly.

Once the external inspection is carried out, the hunter then starts the internal inspection, called the gralloch. To check that the major organs are healthy, we often be recorded on the trained hunter’s carcass declaration. This could be that the deer is not moving as normal, has the wrong coat for the time of year and any signs of injury possibly from rutting, a road traffic accident or possibly having been caught on barbed wire, which is quite common.