Serious questions need answering over horsemeat scandal

Agri-food, Ireland's largest indigenous industry which has delivered a record €9bn in exports last year, is considered one of the key drivers of this country's economic recovery. As such, its reputation as a world leader in both primary production and secondary processing of food is absolutely paramount. Thus it was with horror that most people learned last Monday evening that a burger product from another plant in Co Monaghan had been found to contain 75 per cent horse meat, just as the country was beginning a fight-back to rebuild its reputation in the wake of the scandal around the horse DNA in beef burger products centring on the ABP Food Group-owned Silvercrest plant at Ballybay. In this latest twist, production at the Rangeland processing plant in nearby Castleblayney has been suspended after the discovery of further horse meat in a burger there. The affected batch of meat was not intended for use in Ireland but was intended for use in products intended for the catering market abroad. The off-cuts used in the burgers were sourced in Poland, according to the Dept of Agriculture and Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI). Silvercrest already has lost multi-million euro contracts from retail giants Tesco, Asda, The Co-op and Aldi as well as Burger King, and Bord Bia has moved to expand a food marketing programme in the UK, where the most damage has been done. While it was felt that the issue had been relatively contained by stressing that this was a problem around an imported batch of meat, this new scandal at Rangeland will make the agri-food sector's job so much more difficult in convincing consumers that frozen beef burgers from Ireland contain nothing other than beef. Significantly, gardai have now joined the investigation into how and why horse meat has been detected in some burgers, which shows how seriously the government is taking this latest news. The Polish product at the centre of the investigation was labelled as beef off-cuts that the Irish plants used as filler material in budget-priced burgers. So far, the Polish authorities, clearly concerned that their own meat export markets could be damaged in the fallout, have declared that their own testing of slaughterhouses has not turned up any evidence that any of them handled horse meat. The Department of Agriculture said its officials were in continuing contact with the Polish authorities this week. However, even at this stage, it is clear that much stricter controls will now need to apply to the secondary processing industry, particularly in cases where imported products are being used. Why imported product has to be used in the first place in meat products which should be 100 per cent Irish is also mystifying consumers. The likely answer is that in the race to the bottom where costs are concerned, the major retailers are putting the squeeze on their suppliers to cut their margins even further, and thus cheaper off-cuts are being sought overseas as filler for frozen burgers. While the answers to all these questions must be left to the investigation, Ireland's enviable reputation in producing green, clean and traceable food that is so critical to the prosperity of the country's €9bn agri-food industry, risks being tarnished even further by this scandal.