Damage to good food reputation

Two months ago the Food Safety Authority of Ireland revealed horse meat had been found in frozen beefburgers that had been sold in five Irish supermarkets. That disturbing discovery led to Europe-wide investigations that showed adulterated beef was also a major international problem. Food advertised and sold to consumers as containing beef, was found to contain horse meat.

The public was concerned not just about the deceit involved in mislabelling and mis-selling of the food product. Many were worried that horse meat containing the animal drug bute could enter the food chain, and present a potential risk to health. That is regarded as unlikely. Nevertheless, the possibility does concern consumers: many have lost confidence in food suppliers and are now eating less processed meat. Ireland, having taken the lead in alerting the world to the horse meat problem, had to investigate it thoroughly. This it is continuing to do, with exemplary thoroughness.

The Department of Agriculture in its report into the scandal has produced some disturbing findings. One Irish company, QK Meats, supplied horse meat that was found in two food products. The report strongly criticises the company’s management, accusing it of showing “scant regard” for the public good, and “serious failure of judgment” for not informing the authorities sooner of the likely source of the equine DNA.

There are, nonetheless issues about how thesis was handled and investigated over many months, while it is accepted that Irish processors have in many instances been “a victim of the wide-scale European equine fraud”.

But systemic failings have persisted. More recently, when the Department carried out an inspection at Ossory Meats, an equine slaughter plant, it found that 25 horses had identification "irregularities", relating to their passport and microchip identifiers. If the supervisory practices at this company – and others – could be so lax in the midst of a horse meat crisis, it raises the obvious question: what were the supervisory practices before the horse meat scandal broke, when an official plant inspection were much less likely to occur?

Minister for Agriculture Simon Coveney has accused beef companies of risking the reputation of Ireland's food sector by engaging in "totally unacceptable" practices.

The companies have not just let themselves down, but they have also as the Minister said, risked causing “reputational damage to the Irish food sector”.

The agri-food sector contributes €24 billion to the national economy. Ireland has on this occasion lost a great opportunity to show the rest of the world the quality of Irish food, by demonstrating higher standards of consumer protection in the meat industry than in other countries.