Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 5 February 2013

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine

Burger Content Investigations: Discussion

3:00 pm

Photo of Simon CoveneySimon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will try to answer some of the questions and maybe Professor Reilly will pick up on some of the technical ones. I thank Deputy Ó Cuív for his questions. Professor Reilly will confirm this, but my understanding is that 29% of the meat in the burger contained equine DNA as opposed to beef. Sixty-three percent of that burger was meat and the rest was filler. Effectively, 20% of the burger contained equine DNA - that is, some form of horsemeat. That is my understanding, but Professor Reilly can clarify that.

On whether I raised this with the Commission of the European Union, I have not to date because it is important to get to the bottom of what happened before we do that. I do not want to go off half-cocked to the Commission in terms of making claims or accusations without knowing what I am talking about and what we are dealing with. The first thing we need to do is to get to the bottom of what happened - who is responsible for it, who made the decisions, who added horsemeat to consignments of beef product and at what point in the chain did that happen, what regulations were broken, whether there was fraud involved and all of the other questions to which I am confident we will have answers in the not too distant future. When we have those answers, then let us look at what EU regulations were breached and whether there were control systems that should have picked that up here, in Poland or elsewhere. At that point, I will happily raise the issue with the Commission if it is appropriate to do so.

I was asked whether I am sure there is no Irish horsemeat in the food chain. I am as sure as I can be that there is not, but what I would say to members or to anybody else in the country who has evidence to the contrary is to let me have it. We only have two plants in the country slaughtering horses, although there were more until recently. Our records will show that of all horses slaughtered in Ireland, all of the horsemeat destined for human consumption is exported from Ireland, but as I said, if there is evidence to the contrary, I need to know that. However, in this particular investigation, none of the product sourced from Irish-supplied ingredients tested positive for equine DNA. It is important to say that. That has consistently been the case, and we have tested a lot of ingredients.

On the issue of labelling produce as Irish beef, there is a requirement on sellers of pure beef product to have country-of-origin labelling, but if it is a processed product there is no requirement to have country-of-origin labelling. If somebody chooses to put a label on a product on a voluntary basis, then he or she is obliged to give accurate data on that label. One will often see country-of-origin labelling on products in supermarkets, which is done on a voluntary basis. From next year on, we will introduce country-of-origin labelling EU-wide for other meat products in the same way we do for beef. There is a labelling issue with regard to processed products that have multiple ingredients. That is important. The commentary members got from Tesco and Burger King in regard to severing ties with Silvercrest were to do with breach of contract, as the company had given an assurance to its customers that it would supply Irish-only beef in those products, but it did not do so, and the consequences of that were clear. That is not necessarily illegal. It is important to highlight the difference between the two. One can breach a contract with a customer but that does not mean one is breaking the law from a labelling point of view.

On the most recent finding with regard to Rangeland, our understanding is that there was not a breach of contract in regard to the labelling of sources of ingredients because the company has told us - the investigation will either confirm or contradict this - that the product it was importing from abroad was going into burgers which were being exported to catering customers outside Ireland and that its product for Irish customers, of which Supermac's is the largest, involved all home-grown or Irish beef. The head of Supermac's confirmed again today that he is satisfied that this is the case, but we will have to independently verify that through the teams of people investigating.

In regard to the nature of the Garda investigation, Professor Reilly and I spoke to Assistant Garda Commissioner, Derek Byrne, last night. I asked him if the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation would involve itself in this joint investigation. He was happy to oblige and as of this morning, the gardaí involved in the investigation have got a detailed briefing and an update on the story so far. From now on, they will be very much involved in assessing the paperwork, the supply chain and everybody involved in it and, indeed, the processing facilities concerned.

I made the statement on 16 January that in my view, given the information we had available to us, nobody in Silvercrest was knowingly importing horsemeat. Given the information I have in terms of paperwork, orders and so on, that is still the case. I have no reason to believe anybody was knowingly importing horsemeat into Silvercrest, and it is important to say that. On 16 January I repeated the press statement Professor Reilly outlined - which was made the day before, on 15 January - that ingredients from Spain and the Netherlands had tested positive for traces of equine DNA, but I also made the point, and have subsequently made it over and over, that despite some commentary over the weekend, I was not pointing the finger at any one country or any one company until I had proof to back it up.

I stress that that is important. We did not draw the conclusions we have drawn in regard to product sourced from Poland until we had significant test results to back up our concerns, as I explained last week in the European Parliament to a Spanish MEP who had raised the question with me.

As to when the Department knew there was a problem, it knew at midday on 14 January. We initiated an investigation on the morning of 15 January and it was later that day when the public announcement was made through a press release. We sent our team into the factory before any public announcement was made in an effort to do what Deputy Éamon Ó Cuív suggests is important - he is right - to get on top of the paperwork as quickly as possible with as little notice as possible.

When did we know about it? The answer is on 14 January. When did we realise there was a serious problem? The answer is on 14 January. Why did I not come to the committee earlier? I would have liked to, as I made clear when I gave an updated statement in the Dáil on 16 January. As I said, we were scheduled to meet last week and the previous week, as the Chairman will confirm. I also have responsibilities to attend committees and hearings in the European Parliament during the Irish Presidency, but there was no ducking or diving by me on this issue. When we could not answer questions at the committee, I specifically asked Opposition spokespersons if they would like to be briefed.

To answer Deputy Martin Ferris, processors do regular tests and we examine the results. We also do our own tests. In the case of Silvercrest, essentially we audit the company once a month to check that everything has been done as it should be done in line with regulations and so on, but it would not have involved DNA testing. That is the distinction that must be made. We test all the time for E. coli, chemical content, bacteria and all of the other things that would raise concerns about food safety. Until this issue arose, my Department had never tested using DNA tests to establish what was in a product. That is a new form of testing and I have to say Professor Reilly and his team in the Food Safety Authority of Ireland have done a serious service for the food industry and us all in highlighting and exposing this problem. We will learn lessons and use DNA testing in a systematic way in the future to ensure consumers will know what they are eating, but we must put a protocol in place. It will take time to ensure the entire process is managed properly.

On the question of whether Silvercrest bought directly from Poland, according to the records, it did. The ingredients that have tested positive for equine DNA, or horsemeat, came through three routes. Two were meat suppliers - one based in the United Kingdom and the other in Ireland - while the other was a direct order from the company in Poland to Silvercrest. It is a complex web at which we need to look to establish the facts as to who knew what and when, who was facilitating it and when and so on.

On the question of being sure a Polish company is the source of the problem, all we can say is all of the positive test results involve ingredients labelled as Polish product. We have data for the majority of these consignments which show that a lorry load of product left Poland and came to Ireland. It was paid for - the invoices, order books and so on are available. What we cannot answer is whether somebody interfered with the shipment on its way to Ireland. That forms part of the investigation, but there is a common thread in that all of the product is labelled as Polish and was sourced in Poland. The records show it was a product transported from Poland to Ireland and we need to establish who transported it, who was responsible for facilitating the buying of it, where it was handled and if there could have been interference. All of this work is being done.

On whether there is a connection with the Goodman plant in Poland, a question which was politely asked, there is no connection that we can see between the plant owned by the company and its plant in Poland. To our knowledge, neither of the names of the two companies we have from suppliers in Poland has any connection with ABP.

Deputy Martin Ferris asked what we knew about the position in Northern Ireland. Last night the Food Standards Authority of Ireland issued a press statement confirming that it was holding product destined for Silvercrest which, to my understanding, was owned by a meat trader or, at least, was being handled by a meat trader, the same meat trader which had supplied the product to Rangeland that had tested positive for equine DNA. It is important to say the three samples in Rangeland from Poland came from two companies in Poland but through the one meat trader. The names of the same two companies came up in regard to Silvercrest also.

On the relationship between Rangeland and Silvercrest, to my knowledge, there is no connection between the company which owns Silvercrest and the family business that owns Rangeland, but they are located only 6 km from each other; they are in the same county and neighbourhood. As far as I know, the ownership and management are entirely separate, but they did deal with the same meat trader for at least some of the ingredients in both.

It is true that I was critical of Silvercrest management on the basis of what I had seen. To be perfectly honest, it is a commercial issue between its customers and the company. The focus of the investigation has been on finding the source of the problem and establishing how the product could have got into the food chain, rather than the bad management practices that led to Silvercrest losing contracts with more than two very big customers. To be honest, that is a matter for the company and the trust issues related to that bad management are for the company to address in time.

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