John Carty (Fianna Fail)

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Sargent, to the House. I compliment him, the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Deputy Smith, and the Taoiseach on the quick and decisive action they took over the weekend in dealing with the recall of Irish pork and bacon products in which dioxins were discovered. There have been comments in the media that the action taken was over the top. The same sources would have had banner headlines had action not been taken, accusing the Minister, the Department and the Food Safety Authority of Ireland of sweeping a serious issue under the carpet.

We must remember that 85% of all agricultural produce is exported and it is imperative we have a perfect product free of any contaminants so that consumers in the countries to which we export need have no worries that the product is safe and of a very high quality. As an exporting country we have built up a reputation over a number of years, often through annoying producers with regulations which they think are unnecessary but which have proven very necessary for us to maintain a high quality product for sale and export.

There are 2,200 inspections carried out each year throughout the food chain under the feed inspection programme and 30,000 samples are taken from across the food chain and tested under the national residue programme for more than 200 possible contaminants. This testing complies with, and even in many cases exceeds, the requirements of the EU legislation.

I know this is true because in another life, before I became a Member of the Oireachtas, I worked for the Department and spent some time in meat factories, and there was stringent sampling of the liver, urine and kidney parts from one pig in every batch. By batch, I mean that if a producer sent in 100 pigs to be killed, at least five or six samples would be taken. Those were sent to the laboratory to be tested and the products would not be released until the results came back that everything was clear. If the results were not clear, the batch was condemned and the producer notified that he or she would have to change his or her ways.

The pig farms placed under restriction will have that restriction lifted, I believe, as soon as the pigs are slaughtered. To this end, I appeal to the Minister of State, the Minister and the Department to act as quickly as possible and treat as highly urgent the need to have the pigs killed so that producers can get back in business. They have gone through a torrid time over the past week and deserve every help they can get because this was not their fault.

Retailers and processors also have been under great pressure in recent days, and the way in which they co-operated and helped in every way possible should be recognised. I was delighted to hear the Minister of State say he will make an announcement later in the afternoon that the organic pig producers will be allowed get back into business.

I have one criticism. While I did not hear the programme about it on national radio yesterday, I received telephone calls about it last night from constituents. Galtee makes up hampers which people in Ireland request to be sent to their friends and relatives in England, the USA and other destinations. These constituents received a telephone call from that company to say the pork products in the hampers were fine because they were not Irish sourced. This is dishonest because the people who purchased them believed them to be Irish or would not have bothered to send them at all. I hope after this the company rectifies the situation or at least is honest with its customers.

The Minister of State alluded in his speech to the issuing of a statement by the European Food Safety Authority, and I welcome that statement dealing with dioxins in Irish pork. Its two key conclusions are that in the most likely scenario, if someone ate an average amount of Irish pork each day throughout the 90-day period of the incident, 10% of which was contaminated at the highest recorded concentration of dioxins, the body burden would increase by approximately 10%. The EFSA considers this increase to be of no concern for this single event. Second, in a very extreme case, if someone ate a large amount of Irish pork each day throughout the period of the incident, 100% of which was contaminated at the highest recorded concentration of dioxins, the EFSA concludes that the safety margin embedded in the tolerable weekly intake, TWI, would be considerably undermined. Given that the TWI has a ten-fold built in safety margin, the EFSA considers that this unlikely scenario would reduce protection but would not necessarily lead to adverse health effects.

That speaks for itself. It gives confidence that we have acted correctly and that we have a very high quality product, as has been alluded to by other speakers. That is as it should be. We should be proud of our producers and of the Department in getting this right, especially in light of the fact we must export 85% of our product.