Déirdre de Búrca (Green Party)

I welcome the Minister of State to the House and the opportunity to speak about the Government policy on food safety and health promotion.

The point has been made already that the food sector is an important sector in the Irish economy. It is estimated that it directly employs approximately 300,000 people and that in 2006, the sectors of food retailing and tourism, respectively, contributed €12 billion and €5.9 billion to the economy, almost €20 billion between them. It is clearly a very important sector and our national policy on food safety is central to protecting the reputation of our food sector and improving the image of Irish food exports abroad.

I am delighted that my Green Party colleague, the Minister of State, Deputy Sargent, is now the Minister of State with responsibility for food and horticulture at the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. He has a major interest in the issue of food and food safety and the promotion of Irish food internationally as a quality product.

I look forward to many of the initiatives my colleague will support and promote during his term of office. In the programme for Government, some of the goals that have been agreed will make a positive contribution towards general food safety and food promotion here, one of them being the agreement to convert a minimum of 5% of national acreage to organic farmland by 2012. That will be no small feat because currently less than 1% of our farmland nationally is dedicated to organic farming and as we are aware, organic produce offers significant health benefits to consumers because it is produced without the use of chemical herbicides, pesticides and fertilisers.

I recently attended, with the Minister of State, Deputy Sargent, a meeting of the Irish Organic Trust in the Brook Lodge Hotel in my constituency of Wicklow, which has put itself on the map as the leading Irish hotel with the only fully certified organic restaurant. Some frustration was expressed by those involved in organic farming about the difficulties they are experiencing in trying to access organic produce. The chief executive of Flahavan's spoke at the AGM and told us he has to import 90% of organic oatlets for the organic porridge he sells because it is impossible to source organic oats here. We must provide many incentives to encourage conventional farmers to be part of the move to dedicating a greater percentage of our national acreage to organic farming. The more organic produce we can produce here, the more it will enhance the reputation of the food we are producing because there is a growing consumer demand for organic produce which Ireland would be foolish not to exploit. We have a strong green image and given the growing public concerns about genetically modified foods, which other speakers mentioned also, it is important that Ireland would capitalise on its clean, green image and the opportunity to develop this island as a GM-free island. I was delighted to see that objective in the current programme for Government and the decisions recently made in Brussels by the Government reflected that change in emphasis.

Other European countries have clearly placed restrictions on GM organisms and produce ranging from Austria, which has a strong ban, to other countries, in particular regions in France, Italy and so on, which have strong organic markets and restrictions on the growing and cultivation of GM produce. It is important to point out, however, that there are difficulties because of WTO rules which are placing great pressure on the European Union to open its markets fully to GM produce, often coming from very large producers such as the United States, Australia, Canada and so on. We must have an enlightened policy at EU level. I hope that the fact that many individual member states already have these restrictions in place, and Ireland will join them in having a very proactive policy on becoming a GM-free island, will be reflected in the kinds of decisions that are made within the Council of Ministers in the coming years.

Another issue close to this one is the issue of GM feed and the current dependence of Irish farmers on imported GM feed. Unfortunately, Irish consumers are not aware that in terms of much of the meat they are eating, the animals have been fed GM feed because it is the most affordable feed available to the majority of farmers. Those who have expressed an interest and sought to source non-GM feed find it prohibitively expensive. There is an onus on the Government, given the commitment we have made in the programme for Government, to work towards making Ireland GM-free. We must help farmers and the farming sector to access affordable GM-free feed to ensure that Irish consumers can be confident that the meat they are eating is genuinely GM-free.

That leads on to the issue of labelling. Currently, food must be labelled as GM if it contains above 0.9% of GM ingredients. An EU wide survey of food products was carried out in 2006 — it was carried out here by the State Laboratory. Unfortunately, low levels of GM rice that had been illegally imported from the US were found in five out of the 19 food products it examined. That obliged food retailers like Tesco and Marks & Spencer to withdraw those products from their shelves. The correct labelling of food is essential to a healthy food sector and is something consumers are increasingly demanding. It is important that if there are GM ingredients in the food we are eating, they should be clearly labelled as such. There should be proper implementation of the requirement that any foods containing over 0.9% of GM ingredients would be so labelled.

On a related issue, I am delighted that the Minister of State, Deputy Roche, is present because in his brief he would probably be aware that an EU directive on food supplements was adopted in 2002 but it is being implemented in different phases. Currently, maximum permitted levels of food supplements are being set by the EU Commission, and the Irish health food sector is extremely concerned about that. When we talk about healthy food we must also recognise that many natural food supplements would come under this heading. It is of concern to the health food sector here that maximum limits are being set that appear to be unduly precautionary, extremely prohibitive and that will have a negative impact on the health food sector and on the growing discipline of nutritional therapists. They are currently lobbying the Government for a slightly more flexible approach to the setting of these limits by the EU Commission. I hope the Minister of State, Deputy Roche, will be able to use his position to advocate for the interests of the Irish health food sector in the discussions that take place with the EU Commission.