Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

This was laid out in some detail yesterday by the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Deputy Coveney. I will give Deputy Martin the sequence again for clarity. The first samples were taken by the Food Safety Authority of Ireland as part of the snapshot surveys that it does periodically across all food production in the country. These were taken in mid-November and sent for analysis to a private laboratory. In December the Food Safety Authority of Ireland took further samples at retail level and again had them analysed in a private laboratory.

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