Horsemeat (Food Fraud)

Ben Bradshaw Excerpts

Monday 11th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Paterson]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, the Chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, for her question. Commissioner Borg made it clear to me today that there were no grounds for banning imports on mislabelling or fraud, and that that could happen only if human safety might be imperilled. I have also spoken to Minister Constantin in Romania, who was very emphatic on this point—we have to be fair to all countries involved. He made it quite clear to me—I am happy to share this with the House—that the two main named abattoirs, one of which only deals with horsemeat, shipped products that were correctly labelled. Horsemeat was shipped and it was labelled as horsemeat. I therefore think that this case has some distance further to travel, and we should not jump to conclusions, which is why I am pleased that my discussions with Minister Coveney have led to an agreement that the Agriculture Ministers of the half dozen countries concerned will meet. We all want to get to the bottom of this.

[Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State says that there is no evidence of criminal activity in this country, but may I remind him that inaccurate labelling is illegal? Why has it taken him more than three weeks to summon the retailers and four weeks to come to the House? Given that the highly respected Chair of the Select Committee said on the “Today” programme on Friday that she would not eat processed beef products, why is he still recommending that people do?

[Mr Paterson]

The right hon. Gentleman is right to say that inaccurate labelling is an offence. At the moment, we have to establish exactly what is in these materials and who is responsible for the label. In the Findus case, that material has been withdrawn.