Horsemeat and Food Fraud

Lord Knight of Weymouth Excerpts

Monday 11th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Knight of Weymouth]

My Lords, this is a very serious issue of public confidence in the food that we buy. I share the Minister’s outrage that horsemeat is being passed off as beef. Food prices are rising sharply and those having to buy cheaper food are therefore more likely to buy processed and cheaper sources of meat. We must particularly ensure that these people are confident that food standards and labelling are accurate.

Equally, food processing and manufacturing is one of the most important employers in this country. British food is an area of great potential growth for us and we must do all that we can to maintain and sustain confidence in our industry. In that vein, I am grateful to the Foods Standards Agency for its briefing and its work in providing reassurance that there is no risk to health.

However, I am concerned at the Secretary of State’s media performances over the weekend, which will have raised doubts in some people’s minds over health. For example, he said:

“We may find out, as the week progresses as the tests begin to come in, that there is a substance which is injurious to human health … We have no evidence of that at all at the moment. At the moment this is a labelling issue”.

He is sowing the seeds of doubt. For the sake of clarity, will the Minister be clear now as to whether he believes there to be any risk to human health from food sold as processed beef in this country?

Health worries focus on the traceability of horsemeat, and in particular any bute or other medicines consumed by horses entering the food chain. In 2012, the Food Standards Agency found eight instances where UK horsemeat was contaminated with bute, which is banned from entering the human food chain. In five instances the horsemeat was exported to France, in two it was exported to the Netherlands, and in one it was consumed in the UK.

There are 75 horse passport-issuing organisations in the UK, making it difficult to check their status. Each has a different design of passports, making it easier to produce forgeries. Last May, a truck was seized in this country and false horse passports were seized. I gather that abattoirs do not have to keep records of passports but should return them to owners or to Defra. Is it not time to rationalise this system so that we can trace horsemeat properly?

I also understand that the FSA carries out rigorous inspections in abattoirs. Does it inspect further upstream in manufacturing and processing plants? If not, should that now be introduced as random inspections to increase public assurance up the supply chain? Will the Minister guarantee that cuts to the Food Standards Agency have not, and will not—the Secretary of State again was very uncertain about this in a Channel 4 news report that I saw over the weekend—compromise meat hygiene inspections and its ability to ensure that meat is legal and safe?

The Minister will know that his Government removed responsibility for the labelling of product content from the FSA in 2010. Three government bodies are now responsible for ensuring that our food is correctly labelled, legal and safe: namely, Defra, the Department of Health, and the Food Standards Agency. Is that not incoherent and open to the sort of confusion that we all know can occur between different government departments? Would it not be sensible for the Government to centralise that function once more?

I understand that two types of tests are taking place—those carried out by retailers and those carried out by local authorities under the supervision of the Food Standards Agency. The local authority tests are of retail, wholesale and catering premises. Are the councils concerned being reimbursed for the cost of this work? The tests being carried out by retailers, which are due to the Secretary of State by Friday, will cover only the major retailers. Should he not ask large wholesalers and large caterers to carry out similar tests under a similar stringent timeline?

The timeline for the local authority tests is four weeks to collect and screen samples to ascertain the presence of horse DNA and another four weeks for confirmatory tests to give the proportion of other meats. As I understand it, the plan is for all those results to be published at once in mid-April. This seems an excessive timeline. I understand that we have to get the results right, but will the Minister consider releasing the results on a weekly basis as they come in, as part of his commitment to transparency? Can we also get a cast iron guarantee that schools and hospitals will be tested across the country? The Secretary of State is clear that the retailers are responsible for the food that they sell. Will the Minister tell us who he considers to be responsible for food served in schools, hospitals and prisons? Is it the head teacher or the chair of governors, the hospital manager or the prison governor? If it is the retailer who is responsible, we need to know who to hold account for food, should there be a problem in those circumstances.

The Secretary of State has also speculated in the media that there is a criminal conspiracy. Has the Minister involved the police, having acknowledged evidence of widespread criminal behaviour? Is he passing information on to the police if he has those suspicions? Can he reassure us that no UK companies are currently being investigated by Defra, the FSA or other UK authorities in respect of passing off horsemeat as beef?

Can the Minister tell us, given the Government’s growing influence as committed Europeans, how he is working with the Commission? The Irish appear to have blamed the Poles for the first case back in January, the French appear to blame the Romanians for the Findus case, and the Poles and Romanians are denying responsibility robustly. Is the Commission going to get a grip and answer questions on where the horsemeat comes from so that we can begin the important work of traceability?

However, it is not just the Commission that needs to get a grip. We need the Government to give clear advice to people and public sector caterers on what they should do with their frozen beef products. Ministers need to stop sending mixed messages about whether they would eat beef lasagne or not. A full police investigation into the alleged criminal adulteration of meat products is needed. The European police are being involved. We have heard about an international criminal conspiracy. What is happening with the UK police? The Irish Government called in the police and special fraud investigators at the beginning of this month. Perhaps our Government must do the same.

A quicker testing regime is needed to reassure the public about what is happening. Supermarkets and food industry tests must be reported by Friday, but the Government need to speed up the official tests that they are conducting across 28 local authorities. We need some positive release around the horse slaughter tests that are going on at the moment. Those in the UK are testing for bute, which is banned from the human food chain. Given the concerns about the horse passport system and horse traceability, we believe that meat should be held in storage until proven clean.

With these sorts of measures and robust action from Ministers on the front foot, I think that we can get some reassurance back into our food supply. At the moment, I do not see that from Ministers. I see uncertainty in their media performances and their performances generally on this issue. Our British food industry needs them to step up to the plate and raise their game.