Food Contamination

Neil Parish Excerpts

Thursday 17th October 2013 Westminster Hall

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

It is good to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Osborne. I welcome the new Minister to his place; we worked well together on the Select Committee and I look forward to him having views entirely consistent with those he had in Committee now he is a Minister. I am partly teasing him, but I look forward to working with him. I enjoyed his friendship on the Committee. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Miss McIntosh), the Chair of the Select Committee, on securing the debate, because it is necessary for us not to forget exactly what happened.

I want to concentrate on the consequences and on the many lessons that we need to learn. For many years, I have been saying that we have not had proper labelling of the origins of processed food, especially meat products, and the contamination has highlighted that hugely. Basically, the product was travelling all across Europe from the Republic of Ireland, Poland and Romania into Luxembourg and France—it was travelling all over the place. The trail—exporting from one country and importing to another—was almost impossible to follow.

As the hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Roger Williams) highlighted, the value of the processed meat is key. If someone bought a joint of beef and a joint of horse—we cannot do that in this country, but in many European countries they can—they would immediately be able to tell the difference. If we minced them up and put them in a burger, however, I suspect that when we actually looked at it physically, we would not see a great deal of difference. If horse meat is trading at a quarter to a third of the price of beef, it is tempting to the unscrupulous in the food processing industry to substitute one for the other.

Not only the Government but the large retailers should keep a check on the situation. If retailers are buying beef burgers for less than the cost of the beef that should be in them, they should ask how on earth a company can produce that product for that price. That is a lesson for the industry and the big retailers to learn. The hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire probably shares my view that although the big retailers are necessary, they have used their muscle over the years to drive down prices for primary producers and farmers. They have spent their lives doing it. This time they drove the price down too far, and people came in who said, “Okay, these big retailers want cheap burgers; well, we’ll mix in a bit of horse meat, and it’ll be fine.” That is where questions need to be asked.

My hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton made the case that the Government need enough public analysts, but retailers also need to employ such people or franchise out the work to somebody else. When I go into a large supermarket, I expect to buy a product that is made of what it says on the label. That is the retailer’s responsibility; the Minister may well make that point later. Yes, it is the Government’s responsibility, but it is also very much the responsibility of the retailer.

I noticed that the Chair made a bit of a face when I said that one could tell the difference between a joint of horse meat and a joint of beef. Ethically, we in this country do not eat horse meat, but it is eaten in many countries across Europe, and it is legal. It is necessary to be able to slaughter horses for meat. There are so many horses in this country, some with huge welfare problems, that if we could not slaughter them, the welfare problems would be even larger. I would much rather those horses be slaughtered humanely in this country than taken on vast journeys across the continent in poor conditions to be slaughtered. We must remember that slaughtering and trading horse meat are not crimes in themselves.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

The hon. Gentleman is making a good and cogent point. We must guard not only against inhumane transport but against the possibility that imports of horse meat from places that previously discarded the slaughter of horses, such as the United States—they are now slaughtered in other countries instead—might find their way back to us through Poland or the Czech Republic, with added ingredients such as phenylbutazone, known as bute.

[Neil Parish]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. It leads me neatly on to the fact that, as I said, horse meat must be traceable. It is not only a case of what is imported into this country. In America, there are many racehorses and other sorts of horse that are more likely to have been treated with all sorts of drugs throughout their lives. We must be careful of that.

We in this country must also be careful to ensure that we know where the horses that we slaughter have come from. At the moment, under the passport system, many horses have one, two or several passports, one of which is clean and says that the horse has not been injected with anything, and another one of which may have been used when the horse has been injected with various drugs throughout its life. We need a better passport system and a central database, so that we know where horses come from, to ensure that when they are slaughtered, we know that they are healthy. Although we may not eat the meat, it will be exported for someone else to eat. It is essential.

I believe that some good things will come out of this situation. As other Members have said, it would have been terrible if the contamination had led to a public health issue, but fortunately it did not. One or two horses slaughtered were found to have levels of phenylbutazone, but not enough to hurt anybody eating the meat. We must learn to ensure that horse meat is traceable in future, not because it should be mixed with beef and sold fraudulently but because the meat should be safe.

The other great lesson to be learned concerns the traceability of our own meat. People like farm-assured schemes, such as the red tractor promoted by the National Farmers Union and many others. As soon as horsegate—the problem with horse meat in beef burgers—occurred, people wanted meat from this country. I do not wish to be churlish, but Tesco did not decide to source all its meat from the British Isles out of the goodness of its heart; it decided that that was a good way to make consumers buy at Tesco.

[Roger Williams]

Was my hon. Friend amazed, like me, to hear that Tesco has said that British lamb is now out of season? I find that extraordinary, given that the UK produces lamb in season all year round.

[Neil Parish]

The fact is that for most grass-fed lamb from Wales, the west country and other parts of the country, the height of the season is exactly now, from September onwards. When I used to produce lambs, I did not feed them a lot of concentrates; I fattened them on grass, and they came out in September, October and November. Whoever put out that particular press release probably got it slightly wrong.

That takes me back to the fact that although Tesco wants to source British meat, which I welcome, it does so from a commercial point of view. Therefore, having systems in place to ensure the traceability of that meat is important. However, there is also a knock-on effect. At a certain conference in Manchester—I will not mention which one it was—I was talking to the poultry industry. Again, Tesco has decided to source all its poultry meat from the UK, which is great, but the problem is that it is absorbing all the poultry meat that we produce, so we need to produce more. To produce more poultry meat, of course, we need more poultry units, and to build more poultry units we need planning permission. All those things have a knock-on effect.

It is the same with the pig industry. We need more pigs and pork so, again, we need planning permission. Those Members who represent rural constituents will find that when a piggery or a poultry house must be built next door, individuals do not always welcome it with open arms. I understand that the Minister is not responsible for planning, but the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs should make the case if we are to have more British meat. I am a great supporter of it; we are only 52% self-sufficient in meat, so there is much more that we could do. Production of poultry and pigs in particular can be built up quickly, but again, we must ensure that we have enough premises where they can be produced.

Many more people now ensure that they buy locally produced and British food, which is a great asset, but I also want them to be sure—again, this is a lesson to be learned—that when they go into a big retailer or other shop, they can pick up a product, especially a processed product, and be absolutely certain where it has come from. Sometimes my wife comes back with a product that she presents to me and says, “Where does that come from?” I read the label and it is more confusing than enlightening about where it has come from. I urge the Minister, newly in post, to realise that labelling of country of origin—knowing where a product is from—is fundamentally important. If it has been imported, so be it, but say so. If products are from all over the world, fine, but say so, so that people have a choice. I do not like the old system that states “product of the EU” and “processed in the UK”, and displays a Union Jack. Everybody picks it up, convinced that it is entirely a British product, when it is not. It is perfectly legal to do that, and that is what happens.

With the reports that we have had and what we have heard, we would all accept, to a degree, that we got away with it. It was not perfect, but we got away with it, despite the fact that it was a fraud and we were eating horse when we should have been eating beef. However, nobody was injured. We need to wake up to the fact that horse meat and slaughter need to be much more traceable. When people pick up products, particularly processed foods, they need to know exactly where they have come from. We want to ensure that the supermarkets that genuinely want to have British products are stocking them and that they have not come from somewhere else in the world. We expect our Minister, newly in post, to guarantee that all that will happen.

We can learn positive lessons. The fact that people now want to eat more home-produced meat is a good thing. Let us be absolutely certain in future that that is exactly what we are eating. Although Government have a responsibility, so do the large retailers and the processors that manufacture and process the products. They are the ones that acted illegally. Let us not forget that, whoever was at fault, it was illegal. It was fraud.

Finally, although I agree with the other hon. Members who have spoken, I fear that in the end we will find one or two small processors here and there who will be hung out to dry, and the rest of the larger processors and others will largely be left untouched. Certainly the Irish Government have been rather reticent about prosecuting anybody. I think that that is the tactful way of putting it. Also—the point was made earlier—when a member state of the European Union is having a problem, it should be brought to the notice of our authorities and others much more quickly, so that we can take action. There was definitely a slowness in the whole process. I look forward to the new Minister sorting it all out, and I again welcome him to his new post.

--- Later in debate ---

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

I welcome the hon. Lady’s intervention and the focus that she and the Select Committee have put on not only the FSA, but the overall issue of food governance and the integrity and coherence of it. We have repeatedly made it clear from the early days when its responsibilities were split up that we had concerns about what might happen. Her Committee’s report and the report of the National Audit Office have made it clear that those concerns did not cause the crisis, but contributed to a delayed reaction, which I will come to in a moment. There is confusion at national, local and intergovernmental level. I shall not call for a review today. I shall echo her call for action and for the Government to introduce proposals to change the structure of food governance.

Tesco, the UK’s market-leading supermarket, notably and admirably fessed up to its responsibilities. It said, “We get it.” It took out full-page advertisements coinciding—coincidentally, I am sure—with the NFU conference in February, and it is seeking to re-engineer its supply chains and get closer to primary producers. It has a way to go, as has already been mentioned. I visited Tesco’s headquarters and we went through this in detail. Although it has a journey to make, I do not doubt its sincerity and ambition to do so. It is consumer-focused; there is a reason why it is doing this. Other large retailers have already developed shorter supply chains or other methods of ensuring the provenance of their food.

In the early stages, many took a different approach and frankly said, “Not us, guvnor.” They pointed to abroad or to smaller suppliers, international criminals, other third parties and, frankly, anybody but themselves. It is clear that the criminal activities of some have damaged public confidence in the whole supply chain. The Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee spoke for many in the country, when it reported that it could only

“conclude that British consumers have been cynically and systematically duped in pursuit of profit by elements within the food industry.”

Whether that was criminality, negligence, complicity or failure of due diligence through the whole supply chain, from major processors and supermarkets down to the very small players, all were to varying degrees at fault in causing the failures, and all have responsibility in rectifying them and restoring trust and confidence.

I welcome the letter that I received yesterday from ABP, a dominant player in the UK and European beef processing market, which tells me that it supplies more than 20 countries and has a network of over 15,000 farmers. In the letter, the company acknowledges—it cannot deny—the presence of horsemeat in some of its frozen beef products over the past year, but states:

“It was certainly not an activity sanctioned by ABP in any way at any level”.

It goes on to make it clear that the company is not subject to any ongoing investigations.

In some ways, it is unfair to pick out ABP, because it was not alone in a complex and vulnerable supply chain that put beef adulterated with horsemeat and, for good measure, with trace elements—thank goodness, only trace elements—of phenylbutazone or bute into our homes, hospitals, schools and canteens, as well as, through food distribution companies, into Royal Ascot and the royal household. When it comes to food adulteration, we are genuinely—and right royally—all in it together.

As the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton said, those who came out well from the crisis were the butchers, local abattoirs, and those in local food networks and short supply chains, whose customers could prove where their food came from and what it was. The upside of the crisis is that it has reignited a major debate about our relationship with the food we eat, which I hope will lead to changes in how we produce and value our food.

Much of the modern supply chain is long, complex and international, with multiple handling and processing operations and multiple opportunities for adulteration. The lesson for those in wider supply chains, especially the major and dominant supermarkets, processors and distributors, is that no one can escape responsibility for the mess we got ourselves into or avoid responsibility for restoring trust in those supply chains. It is not good enough to say, “It wasn’t us, guvnor,” because as far as the consumer is concerned, it was.

I want to turn to the issues of food governance identified by the Select Committee’s two reports and highlighted in a timely report by the National Audit Office, on 10 October, entitled, “Food safety and authenticity in the processed meat supply chain”.

I tell the Minister that the Government must clearly now take responsibility: they are also in the dock and must fess up. They must answer criticisms of their role in failing to ensure effective governance of the food manufacturing sector. Although I commend the industry for working alongside UK, Irish and EU agencies to strengthen the testing and tracking of food products in response to the horsemeat crisis, I cannot yet commend the UK Government, whose response to the crisis was hampered by structural problems of their own making. The Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, of which the Minister was a member, put that succinctly in its first report, stating that

“the current contamination crisis has caught the FSA and Government flat-footed and unable to respond effectively within structures designed primarily to respond to threats to human health.”

The National Audit Office’s No. 1 key finding was:

“A split since 2010 in the responsibilities for food policy in England has led to confusion among stakeholders and no obvious benefit to those implementing controls.”

That split in responsibilities is, of course, the one that was devised and implemented in 2010 not by the Minister, who is only just in post, but by his coalition Government. They are the architect of their own misfortune, but more importantly, of what others have described as the flat-footed response to the food adulteration scandal. The food sector and the consumer deserve better. It is not the fault of the FSA, but of the Government who split its responsibilities.

[Neil Parish]

I accept, to some degree, the hon. Gentleman’s assertions about changes to the FSA, but there had been no testing of horsemeat for 10 years or more, and the situation arose only when we started testing horsemeat. What matters is not the structure, but the fact that we were just not testing. All through his watch and that of his Government, nobody was testing horsemeat. That is why I think that he is being a little disingenuous, if I may say so.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

I utterly refute the idea of my being disingenuous, because I am citing the words, evidence and recommendations of the Select Committee and National Audit Office reports. The criticisms are not mine, although I entirely agree with them, because we said the same from the outset, after the FSA was split up. I am not being disingenuous, but frank: I am saying what I have consistently said month after month, and year after year, and that is what our position has been.

I understand what the hon. Gentleman says, but I am hammering the Government because governance is central to how we resolve the situation. We can ask the industry to do many things—we have done so, and the industry is getting on with them—and agencies are helping it, but unless we resolve the fundamental issue of how to bring together the entirety of the food industry coherently and not split it between Departments, we will be back here again. That is what his Committee concluded.

The Government response to the concerns is worryingly complacent. The document states, on page 7:

“The Government is concerned that the Committee may have misunderstood the status and constitution of the FSA”,

and it then defends the FSA in the following three paragraphs. If the Select Committee has misunderstood the FSA, so have the National Audit Office and many other well-informed, critical friends of the food industry who want the Government to look more fundamentally at the FSA and to review the cack-handed way in which its responsibilities were diced and sliced in 2010.

The Government should adopt the Tesco approach: fess up to this aspect of their responsibility, learn the lessons that they must learn and deal properly with the role of the FSA and food governance, instead of tinkering at the edges. It takes a big man or woman to accept that they were wrong, but I hope that the new Minister, in whom I have confidence, will be able to do so.

Let me ask the Minister some questions that stem from the Select Committee and National Audit Office reports. Coming new into the post, does he accept, from what he has looked at, that the Government’s and the FSA’s early response to the crisis was flat-footed and slow, as has been said, partly thanks to the Government’s machinery of government changes? Does he accept that the Government’s decision to split the FSA roles directly led to confusion and a lack of clarity about responsibilities at the outset of the crisis, both between Whitehall Departments and agencies and between local government enforcement and the FSA?

Does the Minister accept that, as highlighted by the National Audit Office, confusion at local and national level still exists today, despite the Government’s well-meaning reforms, which signifies that deeper reforms or the unwinding of some of the 2010 reforms might be needed? Does he accept that, despite strong Government rebuttals back in February and March, the introduction of the banned substance phenylbutazone or bute into the food chain via horsemeat, albeit in trace elements, might have turned the situation from a food provenance issue into a food safety crisis? If he does not accept that, I ask him to read the National Audit Office report.

How does the Minister respond to criticisms that intelligence sharing, especially between food authorities and Departments in Ireland and the UK, has been weakened by the coalition’s machinery of government changes? Does he believe that reducing food testing by local authorities by a quarter, linked to cuts in funding and budgetary stresses, contributed to a lack of deeper intelligence from local sources that might have picked up the risks earlier? To turn to the point made by the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton in his intervention, one of the things that the National Audit Office picked up on was the lack of deep intelligence down on the ground. Although it applauds a risk-based approach, deep intelligence would have flagged up these sorts of incidents at an early stage.

How does the Minister respond to fears that the closure of four public control laboratories in the past three years combined with a reduction in public analysts from 40 to 29 since 2010 raises the potential risk that we will be unable to respond to any future incident of this type?

My final question echoes a concern of the Select Committee and of the wider public. Where are the prosecutions, the fines, the penalties, the custodial sentences, and the naming and shaming of the guilty parties? I realise that the Minister will not be able to go into detail about the ongoing investigations, but we need to know whether we are talking about one or two bad apples or a fundamental problem with a rotten barrel. The Select Committee asks whether this is

“a complex network of traders and processors acting fraudulently to deceive consumers and retailers.”

The longer we wait for conclusions to the investigations, the more the feeling grows that people are escaping justice and that the networks that caused this criminality are also delaying that justice. We cannot expect the Minister to comment in detail on investigations that are under way, but I hope that he can at least inform us of some progress.

At the outset, I reiterated the justified criticism by the Select Committee of the flat-footed response by the FSA and the Government. Its call for stronger powers for the FSA were re-emphasised by the head of the National Audit Office only last week. He stated:

“The January 2013 horsemeat incident has revealed a gap between what citizens expect of the controls over the authenticity of their food, and the effectiveness of those controls on reality. The division of responsibilities for food safety and authenticity has created confusion.”

In conclusion, while Labour rightly demands—I know the Minister will demand this as well—that the food sector step up and take responsibility for its failures and commends the sector for the work it has done so far in recent months, it also demands the same response from our Government. The sins of the father do not have to be visited on the son. The new Under-Secretary of State can acknowledge that the 2010 FSA machinery of government changes were wrong-headed, that they played a contributory factor in retarding the early response to the crisis, that they are a risk factor, as the NAO says, in any future large-scale food adulteration or contamination episodes, and that he should now step up and act for the good of consumers, the food sector and farmers and for his own peace of mind. Last week, the head of the National Audit Office said:

“The Government needs to remove this confusion, and improve its understanding of potential food fraud and how intelligence is brought together and shared.”

I look forward to the Under-Secretary of State doing just that, beginning with his response. I wish him well in taking forward the Government’s action on this matter.