Horsemeat

Simon Hart Excerpts

Tuesday 12th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Kerry McCarthy]

Sometimes people simply do not have a choice between buying the slightly dodgy knock-off cheap telly that has probably come off the back of a lorry and going to one of the high street shops and buying a top-of-a-range brand. That is the point that I am trying to make. People may well know that what they are eating is not as good as the organic produce that is sold in, for instance, The Better Food Company, an organic supermarket in Bristol, but they do not have the option of going there. As I have said, even if people had enough money to buy more than one day’s food and could plan ahead and try to cook their own meals, they would still not be buying premium “best of British” mince. They would be buying the sort of mince that was mentioned just now by my hon. Friend the Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner), and about which I asked the Secretary of State yesterday. If the Government manage to find their way around European Union regulations, that mince could be up to 50% fat and collagen, and other substances that are not meat, without the consumer’s being any the wiser.

We need to get the message across to Government Members. We are living in a world in which people’s cost of living is being squeezed from all sides. Their incomes and benefits are being cut, their rents are going up, and fuel prices, fares and food prices are rising. Obviously they will buy the packet of eight Tesco value burgers for £1, because they have no other option. According to statistics released last week by Mintel, the market research company, some 30% of consumers now buy budget ranges, as opposed to just one in five back in 2008. We cannot insist that everyone should buy the premium, locally sourced, top-of-the-range products, because some people simply cannot afford to do that. The important point, surely, is that all food should be of a decent quality, and all consumers should know what is in their food.

[Simon Hart (Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Mark Spencer (Sherwood) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner). Although he represents an urban constituency, he speaks with great knowledge and experience about the food industry, and has a reputation for doing so. May I also draw attention to my declaration in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests?

This topic has not suddenly emerged over the past two and half years; the problem we are talking about today has been a long time coming, and therefore some of the comments from Opposition Members stick in my throat like a dodgy burger. They speak as if this Government have created this problem, but the entire situation has been changing since the second world war, when the proportion of cash an individual spent on their food bill was much larger than it is today. Then, families would have spent 60% of their income on food, but today that figure is much smaller and as such we have lost the context of how valuable our food is.

I drew an analogy with television, but we could say the same about car tyres. A person would never buy second-hand car tyres from someone offering them on the cheap, because they would instantly recognise that their individual safety could be at risk. However, we as consumers seem to have got into a position where we are happy to see the price of food fall and be driven down. We have lost the concept of how valuable our food is, and that has led us to the position we are in today.

The hon. Member for Brent North referred to the fact that the Education Secretary plans to reintroduce cooking and food to the curriculum, which is a great step forward. Two generations of consumer have lost contact with how food is produced and with how to cook raw product, and again, that is to the detriment of our food industry. If the Government can do anything, more education about how to cook food and deal with raw products will mean that consumers are able to buy better quality food for the same money if they learn to shop about and source food from the right places.

Today, UK agriculture finds itself in a different place from the rest of the world, but that is no fluke and comes from bitter experience. The BSE crisis in the UK taught the beef industry valuable lessons about consumer confidence and how the consumer needs to understand, know and have confidence in a product. Today we know that if we go to our local butcher, not only will they be able to sell us a very high-quality cut of meat or processed beefburger, but they will be able to identify the animal that the beefburger came from, as well as its mother and father. That is the level of traceability in the UK butchery industry today, and UK consumers should understand that. Certainly, when that is compared with some of the points made by the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) about the processed meat industry, and with some of the products sold as meat that normal people would not recognise as such, there is a strong message to deliver on behalf of the UK meat industry.

This is not rocket science: the shorter we make the chain, the easier it is to have such traceability, and labelling will be important as we move forward. We heard from the Opposition about how the labelling of our products should be more prominent, yet when they were in power, there were several private Members’ Bills and lobbying by the then Opposition to try to improve labelling and ensure that consumers understood where and how their food was being produced.

[Simon Hart]

On that point, does my hon. Friend agree that in this instance there was nothing unclear about the labelling? It said beef but in fact it was horse.

[Mr Spencer]

Absolutely, and that is fundamental. Frankly, that could not happen in the UK because environmental health officers and trading standards officers are checking a paper trail that goes right back.