Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

We will do it as soon as we can and if I cannot do it, someone from the Department will do it. We need to get the full facts first, be that next week or in a fortnight's time. Obviously, I want to ensure we respond to this in as appropriate a way as possible. This is a significant industry for Ireland. One is talking about well over 100,000 jobs and an industry worth about €3 billion in exports alone. We need to ensure we do everything possible to maintain Ireland's reputation as a quality producer of food from a traceability and safety point of view.

The FSAI's press release stated that traces of horse DNA were also detected in batches of raw ingredients including some imported from the Netherlands and Spain. I want to make it clear that does not necessarily mean that companies from the Netherlands and Spain are responsible for this. In respect of some of the work we have already done in Silvercrest, they are dealing with companies in the UK, for example, in terms of importing product. The place where food originates is not necessarily where the company responsible for putting that product together and selling it into an Irish company originates. That is the kind of complex trail we need to follow to ensure we find out who is responsible, ensure it cannot happen again and put systems in place to do that. I do not want simply to scapegoat two countries but it is a fact that the FSAI referred to those two countries as a source of some of the material that came into the processor concerned.

We will name companies and I can assure Deputy Martin Ferris that if there are inappropriate linkages, we will highlight those. As far as I can see, there has been no linkage to date between some of the companies that sold product in relating to ownership of companies but, again, let us wait and see until we have a full picture because there are multiple sources for some of this product. That is the reality of the food industry.

Labelling is a very complex matter to solve. If there was to be a label on every food product which itemised where every product within that food came from, one would face a very difficult task putting an appropriate label on a pizza, for example, in terms of where all the individual products came from, be they olives, onions, fruit etc., and likewise in this sector. Having said that, what has happened here is totally unacceptable and we need to find a solution for it.

This problem may have been caused not by a lack of regulations but by a lack of respect for those regulations and the need to enforce them. Common standards across the European Union require full traceability and accurate labelling. If a product comes from one European country into another and is labelled incorrectly, that is a matter of enforcement rather than new regulation. We are collectively examining the issue of traceability and country of origin labelling at European level. This incident will help to inform that ongoing debate in terms of the need for more accurate labelling on country of origin.

The type of burger concerned was a frozen product comprising 63% meat, with the remaining ingredients including onion and other filler protein. The protein should have been derived from a beef-sourced product. It is of concern that 29% of the meat content of the burger was horse meat, which means that 20% was horse meat overall. It is difficult to explain how that happened and we are taking a tough line with everybody involved to ensure we get the full facts so that we can provide an explanation to this House at the earliest opportunity, because consumers and, most important, buyers of Irish food across the world need to know we are on top of the matter.

This incident involved a small segment of the Irish food industry. The frozen burgers concerned were sold predominantly in the Irish and British markets. The vast majority of the beef we export to 165 different countries is fresh meat either on the carcass or processed in some way. However, even though this issue is specific to frozen burgers in a particular price category, we need to enforce the same standards, because every consumer, regardless of what he or spends on food in Ireland, is entitled to the same assurances and quality control systems.

We are taking this matter very seriously but it does not give rise to food safety issues. It is not like the dioxin scare in pork or a disease scare in animals. There is no threat to human safety. It is a question of traceability and labelling. It has been flagged because we have a structured and comprehensive system of checks. We will get to the bottom of the matter and do everything we can to ensure it does not happen again.

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