Contamination of Beef Products

Sheryll Murray Excerpts

Thursday 14th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Miss McIntosh]

Absolutely. As I said, consumers have responded to the challenge by buying more locally, and I hope that they will continue to do so. For example, if we buy meat for a Sunday roast or stew and then freeze what is left over to serve in other ways over the week, we are basically processing the food ourselves, and that will lead to a much better understanding of what we are eating. I entirely take the hon. Lady’s point.

The Committee’s view is that the FSA has been reduced to a food safety body. We believe that its powers were weakened in 2010. It told us that labelling policy was “not really for us” because that is not a food safety issue.

[Sheryll Murray (South East Cornwall) (Con)]

With regard to the EU regulation that would allow certain national derogations, which the Government are consulting on at the moment, does my hon. Friend agree that when responding we should consider very carefully the implications that we have now seen?

[Miss McIntosh]

I am delighted that we do conclude that that approach should be taken, as I will mention in my closing remarks. It was very much the hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) who proposed that, and the Committee was absolutely at one with him in that view.

Although policy is rightly the responsibility of Ministers, we are firmly of the view that the FSA’s diminished role has led to a lack of clarity about where responsibility lies, which has weakened the UK’s ability to identify and respond to food health concerns. Furthermore, the current contamination crisis has caught the FSA and the Government flat-footed and unable to respond effectively within structures that were designed primarily to respond to threats to human health. I believe that this is a firm wake-up call. Having had the BSE and foot and mouth crisis, we have perhaps been a little slack in our food inspections. We conclude that the FSA’s testing regime is weak. It was Ireland’s FSA that identified the contamination, using tests not currently used in the UK, which leads us to question whether the UK’s FSA is at the forefront of scientific analysis.

In our conclusions and recommendations, we state that the Government and the FSA have called for a wide range of tests to be undertaken, which we welcome. I am sure that the whole Committee would welcome the European tests that have been announced. I firmly believe that we need a European solution. We need to examine the whole supply chain. In the urgent question earlier today, an hon. Friend said that the miles and the number of countries that these ingredients have travelled through before ending up on our plates in processed and frozen foods is staggering.

The FSA should be responsible for food safety. It should be given the statutory power to require those in the food industry to undertake tests to determine that their products comply with food standards regulations. That process should be risk-based and proportionate, and the results of all tests, whether mandated by the FSA or carried out independently by the retailers themselves, should be reported to the FSA. As regards the European testing that was announced yesterday, we must ask to whom the results will be reported and whether they will be shared across the piece with all the responsible national authorities.

We want strengthened testing regimes in the UK meat industry. We want to know what the Government are doing to improve the operation of the European horse passport system, given that the Minister said earlier that it is not as effective as we would wish. The Government must also explore how best to avoid future contamination and to achieve the correct balance between affordable food prices and regulations to ensure transparency and quality.

In my constituency, we face a deep crisis in the sheep sector. Across the north of England, and I am sure in many other parts of the country, there is a real fear of sheep producers going to the wall. Most farmers have used their winter storage but are unable to allow sheep to forage because the grass is under snow or deep under water. I personally believe that this is a very worrying development. Farm gate prices have gone down and the costs of farm production have gone up. The cost of foodstuffs is going up, the cost of fuel to take animals to market has gone up, and farm gate prices are going down.

We have seen the constant drive by supermarkets to store on their shelves low-value, low-cost, and, we now know, very suspicious adulterated food. We are worried that the consumer will be caught in a Catch-22 situation between paying the costs of higher traceability, labelling and testing standards and having to accept that they will not be provided with comprehensive information about the provenance and composition of the food they eat. There are strong indications that people with criminal intent have intentionally substituted horsemeat for beef. That leads us to conclude that British consumers have been cynically and systematically duped in pursuit of profit by certain elements within the food industry. As my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall (Sheryll Murray) and the hon. Member for Brent North said, this is not the time, given the current crisis of labelling and traceability, for the Government to be seeking through their consultation a derogation to reduce the labelling requirements for beef or other meat products,

We are calling for more testing of food safety and composition across the European food industry because the current arrangements for testing and control have failed UK consumers. The Food Standards Agency needs clear powers and responsibilities to back up what Ministers are demanding that it do, and what consumers expect from it, so that it can respond more effectively to any future food adulteration scandal. It gives me great pleasure to commend the Committee’s eighth report to the House.

Question put and agreed to.