Brendan Ryan (Labour)

I agree fully with Senator Browne. There is a lack of will to enforce in this country and I believe it will manifest itself in this case. I am not a scaremongerer about health issues but there must be absolute certainty about the origins of chicken or other meat derived from birds. There are idiots, and I use the word deliberately, who think it is smart to circumvent the regulations but they will actually succeed in bringing down the industry. The beef industry took years to recover from the idiots who used growth hormones and those who played games with BSE, and the same thing will happen again. I appeal to the Department and the Minister to ensure that rules about labelling of origin are enforced and verified by the relevant bodies, or it will be pointless.

This amendment excels in gobbledygook that will keep lawyers occupied forever. It is not the fault of the Minister or the Department but something must be done. It reads "persons operating ... within the meaning of Article 3 of the European Parliament and Council Regulation EC 178/2002 of 28 January 2002". That is bad enough but superscript 13 is appended to it, which is given below as "OJ L31,1.2 2002, p.1". I really understand every single bit of that. I am not blaming or attacking anybody but if we do not come up with a way of incorporating European legislation into our own, how can any middle-ranking public servant enforce something, if that is the legal reference to which he or she has to refer? I have no objection to the amendment but this is certainly not the way to make people aware of what is happening.