Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)

With regard to traceability of pork, I will take the last question. I apologise to Deputy Timmins because the other people were interrupting his questions.

Pigs are identified by farm of origin, they are not identified individually. Traceability of pork at slaughter and afterwards is on the basis of batch produced which may be a day's production. My understanding is that this is the system operating throughout the world. If a big customer for a plant had a particular requirement for absolute traceability in regard to all primal cuts, there could be a production line devoted entirely to one particular customer or it could be a half day's slaughtering, processing or whatever. When the pig is slaughtered and processed, that foodstuff meat goes in many directions. Sometimes a customer may require that specific traceability for the primal cuts and that can happen with the current systems. The traceability of pigs is concerned with the moving off the holdings to the processing plants. Our identification system is totally in accordance with the European Union regulations and those systems have come into place in recent years.

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