Contamination of Beef Products

Barry Gardiner Excerpts

Thursday 14th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

I pay tribute to the hon. Lady for the way in which she courteously and expeditiously steered the Committee to the report. Does she share my astonishment that companies such as Tesco, which conducts minute product checks on our farmers’ fruit and vegetables, often causing them huge financial loss for misshapen produce, seem to have failed to do any checks on processed meat products? Might that be because they believed such checks could reveal some very inconvenient truths?

[Miss McIntosh]

I say to my fellow Committee member—dare I say my hon. Friend?—that that is worrying, and I will refer to those checks later. The Committee was astonished to learn that the cost of the checks—he will correct me if I am wrong—is in the region of £1 million to £2 million for one product line. Following the urgent question earlier today, we should be under no illusion that the cost of food will regrettably go up, but this is a wake-up call and an invitation to source more British meat going into frozen and processed foods, in particular. I believe that that will swiftly restore consumer confidence in those products.