Horsemeat

Debate between Barry Gardiner and Kerry McCarthy

Tuesday 12th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Kerry McCarthy]

That is very much the point I am making. It is so important for people to know what goes into their food, but there is a conspiracy to keep that information from people.

[Barry Gardiner]

Is my hon. Friend aware that the Government have just concluded a consultation on the EU food information for consumers regulation, under which they are asking for a derogation so that they do not have to reveal that information on the label to the public in Britain? Mince, which is not allowed to be sold with 35% and 15% respectively of fat and collagen in it, will not be allowed to be sold on the continent, but it will be sold in Britain under that derogation.

[Kerry McCarthy]

Exactly. I raised that very issue with the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs yesterday, and I have to say from his response that it looked as if it was the first he had heard of it; he simply said that we rely on scientific advice, which I think is scandalous.

I am just halfway through my description of the process involved in producing pink slime. The recovered beef material is then processed, heated and treated with gaseous ammonia or citric acid to kill bacteria. It is then finely ground, compressed into pellets, flash frozen and shipped for use as an additive. There was a public outcry over this issue a while ago, and we saw Jamie Oliver appearing on American TV decrying its use. There was a real backlash, and companies such as McDonalds, Burger King and Taco Bell announced that they would discontinue its use. There was also an outcry about it appearing in meals in the public sector, and promises were made that that would no longer happen. Once consumers knew that there was pink slime in their food, they did not want it and wanted the meat industry to stop producing it.

There is also a substance that has become colloquially known as “white slime” in meat products. It is officially known as “mechanically separated meat” or “mechanically recovered meat”. This is the product most likely to be used in highly processed meat products such as burgers or pies. It is a paste-like product produced by forcing beef, pork, turkey or chicken under high pressure through a sieve to get every last little scrap of meat off the bone. Questions have been raised about its safety and some have argued there should be limits on how much of it should be used in a food product—for example, no more than 20% is allowed in hot dogs. The fact is, however, that consumers do not realise that this is in their hot dogs. Finally, there is advanced meat recovery, which separates meat from bone by scraping, shaving or pressing the meat from the bone—again, typically used in hot dogs.

Let me quote what John Harris said in an excellent article in yesterday’s The Guardian—it may sound a bit of a cliché to keep quoting this newspaper, but it is not particularly fond of vegetarians generally. He said that EU regulations insist that if a product is to be called “meat”, it has to be

“skeletal muscle with naturally included or adherent fat and connective tissue”.

He said that our Food Standards Agency insists that economy beefburgers must contain at least 40% of this product, which must come from cows. That is not very reassuring; I think people expect their beefburgers to have beef in them, not cartilage, fat and connective tissue.

In talking about the relentless search for profits from cheap food, John Harris cited a Financial Times article saying that Findus products came from a factory in Luxembourg, which was supplied with meat by a company in south-west France, which had acquired frozen meat from a Cypriot trader that had subcontracted the order to a trader in the Netherlands—who was then supplied from an abattoir and butcher located in Romania. As John Harris says, how messed up has our food system become? All this is a far cry from the sort of meat that many Members praised during yesterday’s statement on horsemeat. The advisability of buying local meat from a local farm sold by a local butcher was highlighted, where the path from the pasture to the plate is a matter of public record. Indeed, I have heard people saying that they take local sourcing so far that they even know the name of the cow they are consuming.

It is very easy to say that, and in ideal world, people would be looking to buy organically reared locally produced products, but that is very expensive. Yes, it can be said that people should try to cook their own food and source it locally instead of buying ready-made meals, but I am sure many MPs grab a ready meal from Tesco or Marks and Spencer on their way home after a vote. We should not be too judgmental about people who turn to value ranges and ready-made meals, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) said. If someone has only a couple of pounds left in their purse and there is a £1 lasagne ready meal or an eight-pack of Tesco economy burgers left in the shop, they will buy one of those rather than buying the mince, the sheets of pasta, the flour, the butter, the tomatoes, the herbs and the cheese that they would need to make lasagne from scratch. Many people do not even have the necessary cooking facilities in any case. I have seen single men in my constituency living in bedsits with just a microwave for cooking.