Horsemeat

Debate between Diane Abbott and Kerry McCarthy

Tuesday 12th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

I congratulate the shadow DEFRA Front-Bench team on pursuing this issue relentlessly and on choosing it as a topic for today’s debate. We had a statement yesterday, but there is a lot more to be thrashed out on this issue. I therefore greatly welcome the opportunity to take part in the debate.

This issue is important not only because it has exposed the scandal of horsemeat adulterating our food chain, but because of the spotlight it throws on the meat industry more generally—what Felicity Lawrence referred to in The Guardian on Saturday as

“the hidden unsavoury food world, in which live animals are transported vast distances across borders for slaughter, before being shipped back again in blocks of frozen offcuts that may be stored for months on end before being ground down to unrecognisable ingredients in our everyday meals”.

Lord Haskins, a farmer and the former chairman of Northern Foods—someone who definitely knows his topic—has warned that there is “endemic, institutional fraud” in the food industry. It is not enough to get to the bottom of whether there is hitherto unidentified horsemeat—or is it donkey?—in meat products on sale in the UK, or to discover whether halal products are contaminated with pork; we need to look at the whole meat industry because who knows what other scandals have yet to come to light?

We are all familiar with the past controversy about beef hormones in our meat and the EU ban in the wake of mad cow disease some years ago. Some may be familiar, too, with the more recent controversy in the USA over what the meat industry likes to refer to as “lean finely textured beef” or “boneless lean beef trimmings”. That may sound fine, but this is more commonly known as “pink slime”, which sounds much less appetising. It is used as a filler in beef products and is produced by processing low-grade beef trimmings, cartilage, connective tissue and sinew, and mechanically separating the lean beef from the fat by heating it to 100° F.

[Ms Abbott]

Does my hon. Friend think that if people really knew what goes into some of these cheaper processed meat products, they would continue to buy them?

[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.