Sir, – Regarding “How Ireland was blamed, then praised, for exposing horsemeat scandal a decade ago” (Kevin O’Sullivan, News, January 7th), there are two dimensions to this food fraud scandal.
The first one is the fraud against the consumers, where horsemeat was sold as beef meat (which is highlighted excellently by Kevin O’Sullivan).
The second dimension is the fact that meat from racing horses had entered the food chain and this meat was tainted with phenylbutazone (or “bute”). Bute is an anti-inflammatory drug that is given to racing horses and causes a potentially fatal disorder in humans called aplastic anaemia. For weeks (if not months) in 2013, there was a discussion on which levels of bute are “safe” in meat for human consumption but according to the precautionary principle (article 7 of EC 178/2002: “in specific circumstances where, following an assessment of available information, the possibility of harmful effects on health is identified but scientific uncertainty persists, provisional risk management measures necessary to ensure the high level of health protection chosen in the Community may be adopted, pending further scientific information for a more comprehensive risk assessment”), there are no safe levels of bute in meat which can be consumed by humans.
The precautionary principle wasn’t applied appropriately, and this non-application led to exposure of consumers to bute. – Yours, etc,
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IOANNIS ZABETAKIS,
Senior Lecturer,
Department of
Biological Sciences,
University of Limerick.