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.