IFA claims dioxin report vindicates traceability systems on farms

By Ray Ryan

Thursday, May 28, 2009

THE traceability systems on farms have been robustly vindicated by the report of the Oireachtas Agriculture and Food Committee report on last year’s dioxin crisis, the Irish Farmers Association has claimednoted.

IFA Pigs Committee vice chairman Pat O’Flaherty said pig and poultry farmers were very disappointed , however, that the Committee did not call for "Country of Origin" labelling.

"Products from third world countries with lower production standards, and ultimately lower production costs, were undermining Irish products.

"The present situation, whereby processors can package and label product in a deliberately misleading manner, does not serve the best interests of either consumers or producers.

"The current situation amounts to unfair competition and must be rectified with a proper ‘country of origin’ labelling system," he said

Mr O’Flaherty said farmers were also disappointed the report failed to recognise the full extent of difficulties and financial losses incurred by pig and livestock farmers as a result of the contamination and recall.

He said 50% of the compensation package agreed for pig producers had yet to be paid out, and this must be rectified immediately.

"Any delay in payment to processors is having a knock-on effect for producers, as credit lines have become much tighter," he said.

Meanwhile, the Irish Association of Pigmeat Processors (IAPP) has rejected a finding by the Oireachtas Committee that the traceability system for pork meat is flawed.

The IAPP, an IBEC group, represents the primary pigmeat processing sector which employs 7,000 people and produced 188,000 tonnes of pigmeat valued at 368 million in 2007. It said it does not accept that the current traceability regime for Irish pork and pork products in not working.

Spokesman Cormac Healy said it should be remembered that the incident originated with the feeding of contaminated feed to pigs.

"The most elaborate traceability system at processing level would not have prevented this incident as the problem was not at processing level," he said.

Mr Healy said traceability in the processing sector is not only in line with EU legislation but is comparable to international best practice.

It has been subjected to intense examination and independent audit by key international customers of Irish pork and has met all their demanding standards.

Mr Healy said there is a need to spread the control function throughout the entire feed and food chain.

The processing sector is heavy regulated while upstream and downstream elements of the chain operate under much lighter regulation and significantly less official controls.

"The dioxin contamination incident did not originate in the processing sector. Yet companies were almost wiped out overnight.

"Processing companies are still struggling to recover from this incident," he said.

Fine Gael’s Michael Creed TD predicted the findings regarding traceability would meet resistance from processors.

"However, having endured a 100% recall for a 10% contamination and the entire debacle having cost the industry dearly, and the taxpayer 180 million, real and effective traceability is urgently needed," he said.

This appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Thursday, May 28, 2009