Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 26 March 2013
111. Deputy Martin Ferris asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine his plans to ensure that food processors and traders are obliged in future to report the results of tests that they conduct themselves and which indicate irregularities or contamination. [14996/13]
View answerThe Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI) under the aegis the Minister for Health has overall responsibility for the enforcement of food safety in Ireland. It carries out this remit through service contracts with my Department and other agencies including the Health Service Executive (HSE), Local Authority Veterinary Service and the Sea Fisheries Protection Authority.
All food business operators are already obliged to report any information that indicates the food they have placed on the market may be injurious to human health. This obligation stems from EU food law (Regulation (EC) No 178/2002, the general food law). This regulation is given effect in Ireland by SI No 432 of 2009 (for farmers and for processors of animal-origin foods) and by SI No 747/2007 (for retailers and for processors of non-animal origin food). Significant penalties are set for breaches of this legal requirement.
Additionally, processors of animal-origin food approved by my Department have other obligations to report results of microbiological testing.
The finding in January by the Food Safety Authority of Ireland of equine-DNA adulteration of frozen beef burgers led to the subsequent findings in Ireland and across Europe of wide-spread contamination of beef products. As a result, the European Commission has launched a specific co-ordinated control programme to investigate the prevalence of horsemeat contamination in beef products and of the associated presence of residues of the horse medicine phenylbutazone (bute) in horses at slaughter. Results of this programme will be reported, which will include 50 test results from Ireland.
Furthermore, the FSAI and my Department met with representatives from the meat processing, retailing and catering sectors and agreed a protocol for DNA testing of beef products to check for adulteration with horse meat. The following categories of food are being tested – pre-packaged beef products on sale to the final consumer or to mass caterers, beef products offered for sale without pre-packaging to consumers or to mass caterers and meat ingredients used in processed beef products. The first two sets of results have already been published by the FSAI.
In my report to the Dáil on 14 March I stated that one Irish processor did not inform my Department about test results which detected horsemeat in some consignments of beef from another Member State, apparently because it did not consider that the results concerned the safety of the food. I consider this non-action to be unacceptable. Hence one recommendation of the report is that EU food legislation should be changed, to introduce a mandatory requirement on food business operators to notify competent authorities about incidences of mislabelling. I intend to pursue this at EU level.
