A "significant" number of recommendations involving shellfish food safety controls still have not been fully addressed, more than two years after they were made, a new audit by the European Commission's Food and Veterinary Office has found.

The latest audit on some Irish-produced shellfish, carried out last October, found that the control system in place for the production and placing on the market of bivalve molluscs, which includes blue mussels, pacific oysters, king scallops and razor clams, presented “several deficiencies”.

These were in the classification and monitoring of production areas and in the official control of scallops and gastropods, a category that includes whelks and periwinkles.

However, the latest audit found that improvements had been noted since the 2011 audit and said “the competent authorities took action to correct some deficiencies related to laboratory analyses and to improve certain aspects of the official controls . . . However, a significant number of recommendations of the 2011 audit report still need to be fully addressed”.

It noted that seven food alerts about certain shellfish had been raised under the Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed Notifications since 2011. Alerts included issues such as the presence of lipophilic toxins and E.coli in mussels and the discovery of norovirus in oysters.

The audit said changes still had to be made in order to reduce the tolerance level for E.coli in one category of production area as the standard was not in line with EU legislation. And the monitoring for the presence of biotoxins in mussels, oysters, scallops and clams was not carried out according to EU legislation.