Pat O'Neill (Fine Gael)

I was amazed at the weekend to hear about the under-17 World Cup which took place in Mexico. A total of 24 teams competed and, by the end of the tournament, 19 of the them had tested positive for angel dust. I congratulate Mexico on winning the competition. Its players did not test positive for angel dust because the team was put on a diet of fish.

Our food safety and food security are the strictest and best in Europe, if not the world. At a meeting of the Joint Committee on Communications, Natural Resources and Agriculture, I heard that the EU, under a new agreement, will increase the level of imports of beef from the USA and Canada - these countries use hormones in their beef industries although the proposal is to import high-quality beef which is hormone free - from the 20,000 tonnes we were importing in 2009 to 48,200 tonnes by August 2012. While this may not seem a lot of beef given the size of the EU, it is more than a 100% increase, and this will continue. I realise these arrangements are a part of trade negotiations and our beef is banned from these countries because of BSE as part of a continuous trade agreement.

I call on the Leader to ask the Minister to continue to make statements on the safety and security of Irish food and to raise this matter at EU level. What is the possibility of an angel dust carcass getting in? What level of scrutiny is in place? Is one carcass in every 100 tested, is it one in very 1,000 or is every carcass tested? I call on the Leader to ask the Minister to clarify this. If there is a food scare concerning beef, no matter whether it is US, Canadian, Brazilian or Mexican, our beef industry will be in big trouble again. I call on the Leader to ensure the Minister continues to talk up the security we have in place in this country in respect of beef and the quality of our food and to ensure the greatest scrutiny continues to be applied in this country to beef imports or any food imported from outside the European Union.