Irish producers claim their poultry doesn't contain growth promoters or antibiotics. But how can we be sure what we're getting is Irish, asks Paul Cullen

One day this autumn, it can reasonably be predicted, a sick migratory bird will land in Ireland, bringing with it avian flu and the next big health scare to hit our shores.

But even without the threat of a pandemic that might affect humans down the line, there are plenty of reasons why consumers should be concerned about the chicken we eat.

Although poultry meat is a cheap and nutritious source of protein that is easy to cook, it's also the most common source of food poisoning in our diet. The information provided to Irish consumers on food labels is minimal, especially compared with beef. Globally, it is a highly industrialised industry where conditions for the chickens border on the cruel, and dubious practices are uncomfortably common.

Celebrity chef Richard Corrigan has given expression to the public unease about chicken in a series of well-ventilated outbursts over the past year, although he has since retracted many of the accusations he made about the quality of Irish chicken.

If Corrigan had concentrated his attacks on chicken sold in Ireland - as opposed to Irish chicken - he might have found himself on firmer ground. While Irish chicken processors say their product is produced to a high standard without any use of growth promoters, antibiotics or other injected substances such as water or salt, the same cannot be claimed of imported meat freely available here.

The problem for consumers is that they have virtually no way of being sure the chicken they are eating is Irish. This applies particularly in the catering trade where the vast majority of restaurants and takeaways give no indication of the country of origin of the chicken they serve, presumably because there is no requirement for them to do so.

Four years ago, the Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI) found that chicken fillets imported from the Netherlands for butchers and the catering sector had been injected with cattle and pig proteins, as well as high quantities of water to bulk them up.

The fillets were believed to have originated in Thailand or Brazil but were labelled as Dutch. A year later, the FSAI was still complaining about irregularities involving chicken imported from the Netherlands.

There is nothing to stop Irish poultry processors from bulking up their product, but Michael O'Connor, chairman of the Irish Poultry Processors Association, says none of his members does this, nor do they feed their chickens animal by-products or give them antibiotics.

He admits that campylobacter, an organism responsible for a nasty form of food poisoning, is "very prevalent" in chickens but says it is not confined to poultry processing. In 2002, the FSAI found campylobacter in 60 per cent of Irish-produced chicken but, as O'Connor is quick to point out, thorough cooking kills it.

Unprocessed chicken imported from states outside the EU is supposed to carry a country of origin sticker, but there are loopholes. Consumers in restaurants and takeaways rarely get information about the origin of the chicken they are eating, and the regulation does not apply to processed products. "Effectively, it means if you import chicken into the Netherlands and put a few breadcrumbs on, you can say it's Dutch," explains Joe Shortall of the Department of Agriculture's food safety liaison division.

Gerard Brickley, manager of Bord Bia's meat division, says some of the labelling used for chicken can be misleading, with consumers wrongly assuming they are buying a product that was bred, reared and processed here. "It's possible that of the chicken you buy in the supermarket, one piece might be Irish and of a high quality while the one next to it could be from Taiwan and produced with zero controls."

It's not an academic point, because of the concerns about some imported chicken. Brickley is happy to defend Irish chicken and criticise Richard Corrigan for "going over the top", but he says he is "less comfortable" about imported chicken. Television cook Rachel Allen says she is "more fussy" about chicken than other meats, mainly on the grounds of taste (or the lack of it). Both suggest consumers need to be more demanding, and Brickley points out that birds covered by Bord Bia's quality assurance scheme have to be reared here, while the board's Feile Bia scheme promotes Irish meat products at the dining-table.

Four years ago, a leading FSAI scientist called for reform of the labelling regulations, but little seems to have happened since.

"We've been calling for country of origin labelling for years now, but we've come up against a stone wall," says O'Connor.

The department says changes must first be agreed in the EU, which is currently reviewing labelling regulations, before they can be applied in Ireland. It points out that the European Commission is taking legal action against Italy for going it alone on changes after it suffered an outbreak of avian flu.

Life is short and nasty for broiler chickens, which are housed by the thousand in large sheds until slaughtering at the age of just five to seven weeks. Most belong to just two species genetically selected to grow outsize breasts as fast as possible, and suffer a variety of health problems from the crowded conditions and lack of exercise.

Conditions have prompted animal welfare campaigners to call for more detailed labelling on the welfare of poultry during the rearing process. As Mary Anne Bartlett of Compassion in World Farming points out, eggs are labelled to indicate whether they come from caged, barn or free-range hens. Yet many of these labels are obscurely positioned on packaging to deter nosy consumers, she says - that is, unless the eggs are free-range, as this is a selling point.

Dr Patrick Wall of UCD's school of public health says a lot of the fuss about chicken misses the point that it is an excellent source of protein in our diet, as well as being affordable. "Few people can tell the difference between the different types of chicken on offer. It's certainly better for cash-strapped consumers to be eating 'value' chicken than chomping on a snack bar." Dr Wall estimates that about 90 per cent of the chicken used in restaurants and takeaways is imported. "It doesn't make sense to me that we know nothing about what we're eating when out yet we fret a lot about what goes into our meals at home."

Sales of chicken fell 35 per cent as avian flu spread through Europe last winter but they have since recovered. However, Ned Morrissey of the IFA's poultry committee says the industry remains "on its knees", with all four of the largest processors in serious difficulty. "The bird flu was almost a kiss of death and it still could finish us off in the autumn." Ironically, if that happened, the importers of foreign chicken would be the first to benefit.