Sales boost for butchers amid fiasco
Speaking after it emerged that Irish food manufacturer Greencore has now been drawn into the controversy, CEO of the Associated Craft Butchers of Ireland, John Hickey, said its members had seen a significant boost in sales as a result of the ongoing crisis.
“We are continually monitoring our butchers and the feedback we are getting is that business is up between 10% to 12% amongst town and rural butchers and between 18% to 20% in the cities. It’s really been as strong as that. There have been reports of queues outside butchers in some areas at the weekends,” he said.
Mr Hickey said butchers had been experiencing growth for the past two or three years, but that the horsemeat scandal had led larger numbers to go to their local butcher rather than a supermarket.
“People are more aware of obesity issues and their nutritional intake and they are increasingly looking at where they get their food and what’s in it.
“This crisis has just pushed it deeper into the psyche that big processed food manufacturers and multinationals are not being trusted anymore and are not without sin. People see their butchers making their beef burgers up in the shop with all their own ingredients and it makes a difference,” he said.
An increasing consumer desire for traceability had led the body to introduce a certification programme to assure customers of the quality of the meat they are being sold, he added.
The crisis took another twist on Thursday as it emerged that supermarket chain Asda had withdrawn bolognese sauce supplied to it by Greencore after it was found to contain horse DNA.
The company, headed up by agriculture minister Simon Coveney’s brother, Patrick, said it was supplied the meat for the sauce by Larry Goodman’s ABP Food Group’s plant in Nenagh in Tipperary — the second time ABP has come under the spotlight in the controversy.
Meanwhile, an EU-wide programme of DNA tests on beef is to be carried out to assess the scale of the problem across the continent.
