Horsemeat

Jake Berry Excerpts

Tuesday 12th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Paterson]

I am grateful to the Chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee for her question. I bow to her knowledge on these matters as a former Member of the European Parliament. I discussed that matter briefly with Commissioner Borg yesterday. He confirmed what I had said over the weekend: unless there is a threat to public health and safety, there are no grounds for stopping imports. Fraudulent labelling and mislabelling are quite wrong, but he made it clear during our brief conversation, on which I hope to elaborate tomorrow, that those were not grounds for preventing the importation of a material within the European Union. However, my hon. Friend makes an interesting point, and I will check the details of the regulations that she mentions. I promise that I will raise her point in the discussions tomorrow.

[Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen) (Con)]

The point is that when lasagne that are sold as beef contain up to 100% horsemeat, there is a clear danger of contamination by bute in those products. As such, surely they would satisfy the test of being a danger to human health.

[Mr Paterson]

My hon. Friend raises an important question that came up yesterday. We have to take note of the clear advice given by the chief medical officer yesterday:

“It’s understandable that people will be concerned, but it is important to emphasise that even if bute is found to be present at low levels, there is a very low risk indeed that it would cause any harm to health”.

The meat content of the lasagne that was mentioned at the weekend, for example, was as low as 15%, so one would have to eat an extraordinarily large amount of this material to ingest a quantity of bute that would exceed the warning of the chief medical officer.

--- Later in debate ---

[Roger Williams]

I have listened to the hon. Gentleman and I know he was very active in this matter. Indeed, I introduced a ten-minute rule Bill in this House to reorganise the port authorities and get a better grip on the issue.

The Secretary of State was right to say that it is the responsibility of retailers to guarantee proper descriptions and the safety of their products, but there must be a co-ordinated effort to stamp out this crime. It is up to the retailers, the Food Standards Agency, trading standards, port authorities, the European Food Safety Agency and, in particular, the police, including Europol, to work together to root out these offences. I cannot emphasise enough the role of the police and their investigative skills in working across borders to combat this trade.

Although I am confident that tests will show that such products are not harmful to health, until we can trace the origin of the horsemeat, we cannot say with any certainty that it is safe. Safety depends on traceability, and traceability means being able to follow the food chain from the owner of the animal and its transportation to the abattoir to where the carcase was broken down into joints and mince and sold.

[Jake Berry]

We take traceability extremely seriously in Rossendale and Darwen, where we have many livestock farmers. The encouraging part of this crisis is the increase in trade with local butchers, who offer the best way of knowing where one’s meat has come from. Whitehead’s in Edgworth, Riley’s in Crawshawbooth and Turner’s in Darwen are all butchers selling locally produced meat—one can look out of the window and see the animals.

[Roger Williams]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that; I may come to a similar point later. He is quite right. Indeed, I should have declared an interest, as I am a livestock farmer producing beef, and I can surely tell everybody that the amount of paperwork and records that need to be kept are now proving their worth, because we can demonstrate that British food is safe and good to eat.

The key is finding out at what stage wrongly described horsemeat was introduced into the food chain. We know that the food chain is extremely long, complicated and convoluted, but we do not yet know where the horsemeat was introduced. We therefore do not know who the victims of the fraud are and who the perpetrators are. Until we can find out, we will not complete the work. However, it is worth reflecting on the fact that the ultimate victims of the fraud are, as always, the consumers, who have been duped into eating a product that they did not wish to eat.

The excellent traceability in the UK food industry means that meat produced and sold as British in the UK is safe and unadulterated. It is easy properly to identify a piece of sirloin, a steak or, indeed, a piece of oxtail, but that is much more difficult with processed and ready-meal products. Labelling is problematic, because there might be many different foods from different sources in different countries, put together in different proportions in one product. In the long term, lessons must be learned, particularly about regulating the food chain across borders.

To respond to the hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Jake Berry), in the short term, using one’s local butcher is probably best—I could mention a number of butchers, but I shall not as I would probably miss out one or two worthy local tradespeople. For a long time, they have had to compete against large supermarkets that have once again shown that their first interest is serving their shareholders, rather than their consumers and suppliers. It is time to repay our local butchers with our custom.