Mary Ann O'Brien (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the representatives from the Musgrave Group for appearing before the committee and Ms Edel Clancy for her presentation. I have two questions following on from Senator Paschal Mooney's contribution. Will one or all witnesses please comment on pricing and the incredible pressure due the times we live in? Invariably the retailers are there for the customer, the consumer, who demands more and better value, high quality and cheaper prices and will go anywhere to get that. We certainly know the consumer wants good and better value, all of the time, but enormous pressures have been put on the retailers to meet huge volume market demands as cheaply as possible and, conveniently, and just in time. This leads me to the horsemeat scandal. I do not think the Musgrave Group has been involved at all. Yet if we go into a SuperValu or Centra and scanned all the freezer on the shelves, there would be a lasagne or hamburger and one cannot look into the intricacy of every single product.

An except from The Week magazine states that a typical product of the horsemeat scandal was the beef lasagne produced by Findus which turned out to contain 100% horsemeat. The lasagne was supplied by a French food manufacturer, Comigel, who had subcontracted the order to a factory in Luxembourg which had bought its meat from a middleman who had got it from a Dutch meat trader who was searching the markets for the best price he could find for that format at that time and thought he had found what he needed in Romania. I could continue reading this all day. I believe there were 27 people in the chain. Sometimes here we talk about the primary, the middle man and the retailer but the chain has become very complex. I believe that China and India are opening up. That they like chickens' feet, noses, liver and offal will put even more pressure on finding the off-cuts needed to make what I would call convenient and ready meals. Have the witnesses any views on the incredible complexity the modern world has brought upon us? There is nobody who can unravel the supply chain. Are there any plans to shorten it? If so, we would love to hear them. Unfortunately it is not simple. It is not just a steak or a hamburger, it is also all the ready meals.

On the issue of labelling, having been a member of this committee for the past two years and having been in the marketplace and in the food industry, I am not supposed to wear the Irish jersey - sometimes the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine slaps one on the back of the hand but I do not care - but the labelling drives us all mad and we need to be together on this issue. We know we are European and we have got to trade on the European market but if we choose to buy Irish we want to be able to do so. For once and for all, can we sort out whether "smoked Irish salmon" was smoked in Ireland, or caught in Ireland and smoked in Norway? I think the witnesses know what I mean. One of the Centra stores asked if the chicken was bought in Brazil or something was done with it here. If those in the food and retail industry do not understand whether something is 100% Irish, how is the consumer to know?