Animal health and food safety are so intimately linked nowadays that it is disturbing to find prescription-only drugs freely available in a number of Northern Ireland veterinary outlets along the Border with the Republic. As this newspaper's Agriculture Correspondent has reported, drugs containing the growth promoter "angel dust", material that can be used to mask TB tests and - most seriously - powerful antibiotics can be purchased over the counter, even though they are legal only when used under close veterinary supervision.
Given the high sensitivity of the issues involved, just as the European Union has removed the ban on cattle exports from Northern Ireland after the BSE crisis, it can readily be seen that these violations must be promptly and vigorously addressed by the authorities there. If such drugs are available so readily to strangers, what guarantees are there that they are not more widely used by those better known to the vets involved? There can be no room for such a casual approach to animal drugs when public health and food safety issues have become so central for a more informed and sceptical public. The very credibility of beef products is at issue, and it is up to all concerned to see it restored.
It is not surprising, therefore, that officials of both departments of agriculture and representatives of food safety authorities should have been so disturbed by these reports. In the Republic, for example, over 100,000 residue tests were carried out last year. In recent years, there have been 140 prosecutions under food safety regulations. Convictions were secured in all but 11 cases, with 40 jail terms and large fines imposed. The same strictures must apply to TB tests, which have absorbed a huge amount of public money. The suggestion that they could be easily masked by drugs such as those purchased last week could undermine this long-standing effort to ensure food safety. As for antibiotics, according to Dr Patrick Wall, head of the Food Safety Authority of Ireland, if they "get into the food chain they reduce human resistance to salmonellas and compylobacter which can prove fatal to humans". Dr Wall called on the Irish Farmers' Association president, Mr Tom Parlon, to deliver on his promise to marginalise those who would seek to use drugs illegally, as, indeed, it has effectively done with "angel dust." The same applies to the Ulster Farmers' Union. There is also much scope for greater co-operation through the EU and on a bilateral basis by the different departments with responsibility for animal and public health and food safety in Ireland, North and South. On the evidence of these reports, there is considerable ground to be made up in the Northern Ireland regulatory environment, so far as veterinary drugs are concerned. Such matters would make a very concrete case study of what could be achieved by the executive or ministerial bodies under discussion in the Northern Ireland talks. It is very much in the interest of farmers and consumers in both parts of Ireland that such co-operation should be able to proceed effectively. That would be the best guarantee of the international reputation of Irish food products.