Anthony Lawlor (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Chairman for allowing me to contribute. I followed the debate earlier and I welcome the Department officials and the representatives from Meat Industry Ireland. I will make a couple of points. I have to agree with Senator Paul Daly on the issue of the Department accepting readouts. The witnesses state it will save on cross-compliance and administration for farmers. Will the Department definitively state that the readouts from the factories or marts will be acceptable for cross-compliance and later traceability?

This whole system is about one word, namely, "trust". The purpose is to ensure consumers can have trust in where they get their products.

Witnesses from both the Department and Meat Industry Ireland used the word "traceability" a number of times. As a sheep farmer, as far as I am concerned, traceability finishes at the factory floor. If Deputy Cahill buys two lamb chops in a supermarket, he will not know where the lamb came from, what its parentage was, what breed of lamb it was, whether it was a crossbreed or a purebred or anything else. If he wants to find out where his lamb comes from, he could come to me and I would sell him a box of lamb killed in a small abattoir. Then he would know where the two lamb chops he will eat for his dinner tonight came from. A customer in any of the shops or supermarkets will pick up a small pack of lamb featuring a nice picture of a farmer with his few lambs and sheepdog and will believe the farmer pictured is the producer of the two little lamb chops in the packet. However, that will not be the case because the farmer in question will not be able to produce so many lambs.

There is, therefore, no traceability for consumers from the moment a lamb enters a meat factory to the point at which it is placed on the counter of a supermarket. I would love the packaging for lamb to feature labels such as, "From a crossbred sheep", "From a black-faced mountain sheep", "From a Suffolk sheep", "From a purebred Texel" or "From a Texel cross", as occurs with beef products. A premium is paid for Angus and Hereford beef. This type of premium is not possible in the sheep sector because the industry does not want to keep track of lambs after they have been broken down into their individual parts. Traceability would allow customers to know where the lamb they buy comes from.

As I stated, the proposed system is based on trust. As a producer, I must assume the cost of the new electronic identification tags to ensure my flock will meet the compliance requirements of the meat factories. How much will the factory do to ensure customers are able to identify the lamb that I watched being born and which I reared, tagged, brought to the factory and then lost sight of, as it were, because the customer cannot trace it from his or her plate?