Food Fraud

Guy Opperman Excerpts

Monday 8th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Roger Williams]

I think that the hon. Gentleman is trying to introduce a political point which is far outside the scope of the debate.

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing the debate. Let me return it from the political point-scoring of the hon. Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies) to the fact that we all support the fundamentals of the report. More specifically, and more importantly, does the report not ram home the point that our constituents should be buying from their local butchers whenever possible, because they offer the greatest possibility of traceability in the food chain?

[Roger Williams]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. I am tempted to give a long list of local butchers in my constituency, but I will confine the list to butchers in my village. Brian George operates a very fine butcher’s shop, and slaughters the animals in the back. I am told by the Welsh Assembly Government that the hygiene standards there are excellent. I also know that it is possible to walk around other butchers’ shops in my constituency, and to be told “This piece of beef came from a bullock belonging to Mr Price of Llanafan”, or “Mr Jones of Drostre”. After the horsemeat scandal, there was a tendency to use local butchers, but, unfortunately, people now seem to be going back to supermarkets and more processed food.

My father always used to say that he would never eat any meat other than in slices, because then he could see where it came from. Once people started mincing it up, he said, there was doubt. That takes me back 30 or 40 years, but it strike me as good advice which some of our retailers could have taken during the horsemeat scandal.

Professor Elliott rightly observed that the main priority should be a “consumers first” approach. That returns me to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Redcar (Ian Swales) about the interface between the retailer and the consumer. Given that interface, the retailer should take the responsibility.