Tracing the food chain eases safety concerns

TRACING the primary producer in the food chain has become a selling point in the food industry.

Last week it was the poultry sector’s turn to introduce a Quality Assurance Scheme.

This is an important step as people want to know the source of what they are eating in order to protect their health.

Let’s hope it goes well for the industry that has been suffering competition from chicken imports in recent years.

Avian flu has caused consumer anxiety about the effects of consuming chicken. And after all, as I have said before, you do not expect the food you eat to contribute to your death.

Eating too much of the wrong food is another matter, but that’s not the issue at stake.

It’s quite extraordinary that less than a week after the launch of the Quality Mark in Ireland for chicken consumers, poultry in Britain was revealed as being sold beyond its sell by date.

To add insult to injury it is not illegal to do this, although from a food safety point of view it is in breach of best practice.

What the news from Britain does is put further question marks over the poultry issue.

Even if a sell by label was never changed in Ireland it puts further doubt in consumers’ minds about the safety of what they eat.

We’ve had mad cow, foot and mouth, but so far we have escaped any serious fall out from chicken apart from its contribution to mad cow diseases.

Chicken waste was used in animal feed you will not be pleased to know, but such was the case.

So can we be sure about our chickens now? I know people who will not eat chicken because of basic concerns about the way the birds are treated.

They fear also that the level of antibiotics used to keep diseases at bay is also dangerous which are similar to the concerns that have been raised about pork.

In may ways mass production of food at affordable prices has the potential to become a gun pointing straight at the head of consumers and they know it.

It is a further worrying factor that the move towards quality marks has been as a direct result of the unreliability that has crept into the food chain.

At a time when the world has more technical and nutritional sophistication than ever before it is quite astonishing the food chain can be a lethal weapon.

Fifty years ago when nuclear wipe out was the global fear individuals were not under threat from the food they ate.

Now their lives are at risk from dodgy animal husbandry and from lunatics who think they have God on their side when they blow up innocent people.

So it’s quite ironic that at a time of increasing wealth and prosperity people are under personal threat, not only from terrorists, but also potentially from the food we eat.

The Bord Bia launch, while doing their very best, cannot hide the question that hangs over food safety, where contempt for human life and cynicism about what is put into the food chain seems to be on the increase rather than on the decline.

Following the allegations about labels being tampered with in Britain, Tesco was forced to come out and reassure customers the chicken they were eating was safe.

In its own way the food safety issue is a bit like a terrorist threat.

As the disclosures about the dishonest sell-by-dates are highlighted, you never know anymore where the threat is going to come from next.

To that extent we have to thankful that the Bord Bia scheme has been initiated.

How reassured we can be about food safety overall as consumers is another matter entirely.