Jimmy Deenihan (Kerry North, Fine Gael)

I had the privilege of serving in the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food more than ten years ago. At that time, there was major concern about BSE. The then Minister and I confronted that challenge by putting in place adequate regulations to protect the future of the beef industry. One aspect of this was our concern to ensure the safety of Irish meat products, which we dealt with by introducing a comprehensive labelling system. Ten years later, however, little progress has been made. The legislation and directives are in place but, as I know at first hand, they are not being implemented.

The recently published report, The Labelling of Food in Ireland 2007, states:

Information required under the beef labelling regulations should be applied to, or attached to, individual pieces of meat or to their packaging material. Where beef is not wrapped, the information is required to be provided in a written and visible form to the consumer at the point of sale.

However, this is not happening. That is the bottom line.

Under WTO regulations, Brazil is entitled to export a specified quantity of beef to Europe and elsewhere. The issue we are discussing is the safety of that beef. Deputy Neville told me he worked in a meat processing plant in Rathkeale some years ago that exported a large quantity of beef to the United States. Every month, customer representatives came from the United States to inspect the quality of the meat they wished to purchase. Does somebody from Ireland or the EU travel regularly to Brazil to monitor the origin of the beef being exported here and how it is processed?

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