Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)

The area of food labelling was centralised in the Food Safety Authority of Ireland and enormous progress has been made since 2000 on the general labelling of meats. The Oireachtas passed legislation earlier this year to enable the Minister for Health and Children to implement the regulations governing the labelling of beef in restaurants and other catering houses.

There are 44,000 food businesses in Ireland, 29,000 of which are in the service sector. The environmental health officers, who are employees of the Health Service Executive, operate under a service contract with the Food Safety Authority of Ireland and inspect approximately two thirds of catering premises every year. Checks on compliance with the new health, country of origin of beef regulations are being incorporated into routine inspections for establishments covered by the regulations. The regulations came into effect on 3 July 2006 and the Department has asked the Food Safety Authority of Ireland to ensure they are implemented as vigorously as possible from the earliest opportunity. That programme is currently being rolled out.

On the issue of poultry meat labelling, the legislation introduced earlier this year enables the Department to extend the country of origin labelling requirements to meats other than beef. The requirements can be extended to poultry, pig and sheep meat. Currently the Department is drawing up a scheme which will be presented to the Minister for Agriculture and Food, Deputy Coughlan, by the end of this week or early next week, for her approval. That scheme will enable the Department to introduce country of origin requirements on poultry meat in the Irish catering sector.

The proposals will be submitted to the Minister for Health and Children and then to the European Commission for final approval. However, the European Commission is not generally in favour of countries devising their own labelling schemes. In that context, it would be more beneficial if we could advance the proposals we made to the European Agriculture Commissioner, with which she agreed, regarding the need for the European Union to have country of origin labelling. The Minister for Agriculture and Food and I have, at Council of Ministers meetings and other European fora, consistently emphasised the need for progress on the labelling issue, particularly as it concerns beef, poultry and sheep meat. We intend to continue to pursue the matter.

Some progress was made when the Health and Consumer Protection Directorate of the European Commission undertook a consultative process on this area recently and Ireland put a strong proposal to the Commission as part of that consultation process. We would like to see EU-wide agreement on the introduction of the type of regulations we deem necessary to protect our industry and assure consumers of the quality, safety and authenticity of the food they eat.

The primary task of the environmental health officers is to ensure safety and hygiene standards are adhered to in the catering and food sectors. The additional role given to the officers is also important and I am sure will be activated further in the near future.

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