Pig farmers to ramp up meat DNA sampling exercise

'If the consumer knows it’s Irish they are willing to give that premium for it because they know it will have been farmed well.'

Pig farmers frustrated over increased levels of “misleading” meat marketing during a time of crisis within the industry have taken matters into their own hands, commissioning expensive DNA testing on meat samples to trace their true origin.

The initiative started around 10 years ago but is ramping up, as the group say they are detecting increasing volumes of imported meat, some of which could be selling as Irish, over the last few weeks.

It’s no small feat. The pig farmers behind the operation, who are all members of the Irish Farmers Association, have even set up a DNA sub-committee tasked with collating the samples, sending them off for testing and recording the results.

The group is supported by the organisation’s 46,000 members farmers who, spread across Ireland, are able to carry out nationwide spot-checks on butchers, supermarkets, hotels and restaurants to make sure what’s in the plate or packet is as it has been marketed.

With almost 1.7m pigs in Ireland, according to the latest Central Statistics Office figures, pork accounts for almost 8% of Ireland’s agricultural output, worth around €543m to the economy annually. However, the industry has come under pressure over the last year, as prices have fallen at a time when input prices are hitting new highs.

It costs around €35/sample, but the farmers involved in the project believe that’s a small cost to pay to defend their industry. And if it turns out the meat is not what’s on the label, or what it’s implied to be, they’re not afraid to be vocal about it.

Just a few weeks ago, farmers from the organisation protested outside a butcher’s shop.

“We could only find one item of Irish pig meat in the whole shop,” Tom Sherman from Mallow, Cork, chairman of the DNA sub-committee, told the Irish Examiner.

A lot of the meat sampled may not have the word “Irish” beside it, but with distinctive green, white and gold colouring, Irish sounding names, and Celtic font often shown alongside food on shelves and packaging, it’s easy to see how shoppers would have the impression they are purchasing local produce.

And it may shock some holidaymakers to hear the swanky hotel you’re staying in may not be dishing up succulent Irish pork, with Mr Sherman explaining the next stage of the project would be to sample hotels and foodservice outlets.

“We have a database built up over the last eight or nine years of all the boars in the country. So we can compare the samples with the genetics on the database and do a paternity test to tell is this from an Irish boar,” he said.

“The reason we started this is because there were an awful of supermarkets and retailers selling meat which is packaged in Ireland, sliced in Ireland, but it was actually European meat.” However, in more recent years retailers have been better, with recent results showing 98% of the pork tested and sold as Irish from local supermarkets was Irish.

“At the minute, the price of meat in Europe is much cheaper than it is in Ireland, so there is a temptation, and there is very good money being made by these people bringing in the foreign meat and passing it off as Irish,” Mr Sherman said.

“If the consumer knows it’s Irish they are willing to give that premium for it because they know it will have been farmed well.

“As one man said to me recently: ‘why would they do drugs, when they can do bacon?’” For Mr Sherman, the worst part is that it comes at a time when the pig industry is in “complete crisis”.

“The whole pig industry is in crisis in Ireland at the minute. Feed prices are up nearly 100%, the price of pigmeat has fallen by about 30c/kg — there are people who are going to go to the wall over this. The prices of beef have gone up substantially but the prices of pigs have completely dropped to 140c-145c/kg,” he said.

“That is life as a pig farmer, and we accept those fluctuations in the market. But what we do not accept is people passing off foreign meat as Irish.

“If there wasn’t the profit in it, which is in it. Why do those people go to all the lengths they do to make the packaging look so much like Irish produce - the simple reason is they are making a fortune out it.” So far, the group has tested tens of thousands of samples of meat and even has the backing of some of Ireland’s biggest supermarket chains.

The testing is carried out independently by Dublin based firm IdentiGEN, which claims to be the first company in the world to develop and deliver a DNA traceability platform at an industrial scale, and can test any sample the size of a size teaspoon or larger.

Imported meat also often contains higher densities of water and nitrates as levels are tightly controlled in Ireland through the Bord Bia Quality Assurance Scheme.

“Bord Bia Quality Assurance allows only 10% liquid, so the consumer is paying for the water when they buy imported,” he said.

As a customer, it can be difficult to know if where your produce has originated from - especially in a restaurant or hotel where food is served without labels.

If you ask, butchers are legally obliged to tell you, but that does not stop anyone from telling a customer whatever they please.

However, one thing the spot checks have proved is the veracity of labels like Bord Bia Quality Assured.

“We check Bord Bia Quality Assured bacon on an ongoing basis to make sure it is what it says it is, but to be fair, if the Bord Bia label is on it, it does always show up as being Irish,” Mr Sherman said. “If any member of the public asks for a piece of meat and they are told it’s Irish, if they are in doubt, contact the IFA and we can get it tested and we can find out within a week for them,” Mr Sherman added.

The results for the latest batch sent off this month are expected imminently.