Donie's Ireland news daily BLOG Sunday

Irish food industry finds itself contaminated badly as burger crisis deepens

   

Horsemeat scandal is now like a runaway train that could yet derail Ireland’s export markets,

The horse-meat-in-beef-burgers scandal is now a fully fledged economic crisis for this country. With further DNA test results due to be released in the next 48 hours, Ireland’s multi-billion agribusiness – a beacon of light during the recession – could be extinguished for months and the country’s reputation as an international food producer may be damaged beyond repair.

Since last Tuesday’s announcement, greeted with tabloid puns and strident government and food agency claims that human health was not at risk, the crisis has deepened with each passing day.

It is now a runaway train that could yet derail the lucrative export market for Irish processed meat products and cost the economy millions of euro. By Friday, the full fallout over the horsemeat controversy was becoming clear: the damage included immense reputational harm to not just Irish meat processors found to have produced burgers with equine DNA but the overall food industry here.

Reputational damage to major international companies will also cost Ireland dear in lost business – even though it now appears likely that the source of the contamination was a bought-in additive from either the Netherlands or Spain, though the Spanish have denied involvement.

Tesco – where one of its Irish produced “Value Range” burgers had 29 per cent horsemeat – lost €300m of its market value in one day. Burger King was revealed as using one of the Irish suppliers at the centre of the storm. It has insisted its meat was produced and stored separately at the plant with none of the additives or fillers thought responsible for the contamination. Nevertheless, the global fast-food giant is carrying out its own separate investigation.

Burger King said: “We would like to reiterate that all Burger King products produced by us are stored separately and manufactured on an independent line. There is no evidence of any contamination of raw material used for the manufacturing of any Burger King products.”

Asda, the Co-op and Sainsbury’s – three of the biggest supermarket chains in Britain with turnovers running into billions of euro each year – started clearing their shelves of frozen beef burgers as a precautionary measure even though they were not among the four retailers (Dunnes Stores, Lidl, Aldiand Tesco) found to be unwittingly selling burgers contaminated with traces of horsemeat.

The supermarkets delivered hammer blows to Ireland’s reputation as a food-exporting country. The Co-op said: “We can confirm that we take two lines of frozen own-brand beef burgers from Silvercrest Foods [Ballybay, Co Monaghan]. Neither of these products have been implicated. . . however, we are treating this matter very seriously and, purely as a precaution, we are removing them from sale.”

Sainsbury’s said: “All our burgers are made from 100 per cent British beef but as a precautionary measure we are withdrawing those sourced from Dalepak.”

The Food Standards Agency in Britain has launched its own investigation.

More worryingly still, the Government’s claims that there is no threat to human health is already being questioned by at least one respected source.

The Society of Chief Officers of Environmental Health in Scotland said burgers containing horsemeat could have been made from diseased or injured animals.

Society chairman John Sleith said: “We note that statements are being made that it is not a health issue, but our concern is there is no information on how the horsemeat came to be in the burgers and so there is no way of telling whether the meat is safe to eat. It could be from diseased or injured animals, for example.”

It’s hard to argue with his logic. If you didn’t know there was horsemeat in the burgers in the first place, how can you vouch for its provenance?

According to Bord Bia figures, the UK – with its population of 62 million and who, like the Irish, are not culturally inclined to eat horsemeat – is the main destination for Irish food and beverage exports, with a little more than €3.2bn worth of produce exported to the British market last year.

Bord Bia said on Friday it is continuing to work closely with Irish beef exporters to reassure overseas customers.

So deep is its concern over the reputational damage that it has carried out a statistical survey of online news sources. So far, it says, the impact has been limited outside of Ireland and the UK. In all, 4.4 per cent of online news stories related to the horsemeat issue.

“Accordingly, there is little or no impact to date on trade beyond the Irish and UK markets,” Bord Bia said.

So why look for horsemeat in cheap beef burgers but not look for traces of, say, chicken or lamb?

That’s the question those who suspect a possible conspiracy are asking in the wake of the controversy that now threatens jobs in the meat-processing industry and will probably lead to the destruction of 10 million frozen meat patties – as well as another 3.7 million burgers which were produced in the past week.

In all, 100,000 people are employed in Ireland’s food industry and it will be months before the impact can be assessed – even if there is no danger to human health.

The Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI) insists that its tests carried out on cheaper “value” burgers in various supermarkets were completely random; that it had no advanced information and there was no whistleblower pointing it towards possible equine “contamination” in bovine food products.

Raymond Ellard, FSAI director, told the Sunday Independent: “We went to retail outlets. We just took 27 samples, which, as it happens, came from five different production plants in Ireland plus some in the UK. Did we cover every factory that is producing burgers in this country? Probably not. We could have looked for sheep or chicken but we didn’t. The more you test the more it costs, so we were just having a ‘look-see’, to be honest with you. We didn’t expect to find anything as startling as we did find. We picked those two species and said ‘let’s have a look’.”

Pressed further, he insisted that looking for equine DNA was completely random – a shot in the dark.

“I know people will say, ‘there’s no smoke without fire, they must have known something’, but we didn’t. We have done this type of random process before. We went to fish and chip shops and took samples of fish and asked, ‘okay, they are selling it as cod, I wonder if it is actually cod?’ and then in some cases it turned out not to be. It was pollock or whatever.

“We have also looked in the past, using similar technology, for the presence of GMOs (genetically modified organisms). In this case, relating to burgers, we simply said, ‘okay what will we look at this year? We will take a look at beef and we will just see if there is anything else in them’.”

In all, 27 beef burger products were analysed, with 10 of the 27 products (37 per cent) testing positive for horse DNA and 23 (85 per cent) testing positive for pig DNA.

In addition, 31 beef meal products – shopping-trolley staples such as cottage pie, beef curry pie and lasagne – were also analysed. Of these other beef products, 21 were positive for pig DNA but all were negative for horse DNA.

All 19 salami products analysed tested negative for horse DNA.

But traces of horse DNA were detected also in batches of raw ingredients, including some imported from the Netherlands and Spain which are used in the production of burgers.

In simplistic terms, it’s a “beef” powder – meat protein used to bind burgers. Spanish meat producers yesterday insisted they had sold no horsemeat to the UK or Ireland for at least two years.

Confecarne, which represents the industry, insisted Spain was not to blame for the scandal.

A spokesman said Spain did not sell “a single kilo” of horsemeat to the UK or Ireland in 2011 or 2012. The spokesman added: “Spain has quickly been blamed in order to divert attention from a problem they have over there. This false allegation could do a lot of damage to Spanish products.”

While the FSAI findings suggest imported additional products may be the source of the equine contamination, this is not yet proven, though the results of further tests released on Thursday night appear to have narrowed the source of the contaminant down to one imported product.

The beef burger products that tested positive for horse DNA were produced by two processing plants, Liffey Meats and Silvercrest Foods in Ireland and one plant, Dalepak Hambleton, in the UK.

Silvercrest Foods and Dalepak Hambleton are part of the ABP Food Group – the international meat empire headed up by 75-year-old Larry Goodman – a controversial but low-key figure these days who was a central figure in the Beef tribunal more than two decades ago.

Mr Goodman remains one of the country’s richest men, having rebuilt his empire after his tribunal difficulties.

In his first interview for more than two decades, Mr Goodman said that cost-cutting by his company was not to blame for the contamination.

Mr Goodman said he was “disgusted” by some of the media coverage he had read and said his company had never traded in horsemeat.

“We are talking about DNA testing and DNA will pick up molecules and something in the air,” he told the Financial Times.

“I would not be surprised if there was cross-contamination of various species if one were to do DNA testing.”

He admitted there was intense pressure from retailers on cost but this did not mean that ABP Food Group, the parent company of Silvercrest and Dalepak Hambleton, used inferior products.

However, the president of the ICMSA, John Comer, has said that farmers on the ground have no doubt that a very significant factor in this week’s burger controversy and other previous food controversies are a direct result of the relentless pressure being exerted on processors throughout the EU by the supermarket multiples to supply food at progressively cheaper prices.

The beef burgers that tested positive were on sale in Tesco, Dunnes Stores, Lidl, Aldi andIceland.

In nine of the 10 beef burger samples from these retailers, horse DNA was found at very low levels. However, in one sample from Tesco, the level of horse DNA indicated that horsemeat accounted for approximately 29 per cent relative to the beef content.

It was that single sample that found that horsemeat accounted for about a third – relative to beef content – of a “beef burger” that is most problematic.

This wasn’t just trace elements of DNA that could have been picked up by tests at aerosol levels. For example, transporting beef product in a refrigerated truck that had once been used to carry horsemeat products could account for a positive test for horse DNA even if the truck had been professionally cleaned and disinfected to a high standard.

The FSAI’s Mr Ellard defended the delay of more than four weeks between the positive tests for equine DNA and the results being made public.

He said it was partly as a result of surprise at the initial findings and the realisation that the results would cause controversy. The FSAI concluded it had to be 100 per cent accurate. As a result, a second batch of tests were carried out and analysed here and further tests were carried out in Germany to ensure the results were correct.

When the positive test for equine material was discovered, further tests were carried out on the composition of that equine material to see if there were any traces of phenylbutazone, otherwise known as “bute”, the anti-inflammatory drug used to treat injured horses but which is banned for human consumption. None was found.

Mr Ellard pointed out that if a horse is administered bute in its lifetime, it is stamped on its horse passport and so should not make its way into the human food chain.

There is a processing industry in Ireland relating to equine meat targeted for the export market. About 20,000 horses are slaughtered in this country each year. The market is small but growing and Mr Ellard says that the same rigorous checks on horsemeat are carried out as occurs in beef factories and slaughter houses.

“There is a vet present. The animals are examined before slaughter and afterwards. There are checks on identity and for the presence of contaminants as there is in the beef or lamb or pig industries,” he said.

But while that is true, the presence of equine DNA in a beef burger and, more saliently, the presence of a large proportion of horsemeat in one specific sample remains a mystery – despite the insistence there being no intrinsic threat to human health.

Professor Alan Reilly, chief executive of the FSAI, said that while there was a plausible explanation for the presence of pig DNA in these products due to the fact that meat from different animals was processed in the same meat plants, there was no clear explanation at this time for the presence of horse DNA in products emanating from meat plants that did not use horsemeat in their production process.

“In Ireland, it is not in our culture to eat horsemeat and therefore, we do not expect to find it in a burger. Likewise, for some religious groups or people who abstain from eating pigmeat, the presence of traces of pig DNA is unacceptable,” he said.

The further test results released on Thursday night did provide some clarity.

They confirmed that nine out of 13 samples of finished burgers at Silvercrest Foods taken this week tested positive for the presence of equine DNA. It also confirmed seven samples of raw ingredients were tested, one of which, sourced from another EU state, tested positive. All ingredients in the production of burgers sourced from Irish suppliers tested negative for equine DNA.

A final positive identification of an imported product as the source of the equine DNA and horsemeat in Irish-produced burgers is getting closer, but every day that passes without a conclusion will cost this country dear.

Charity shops outrage as Taoiseach’s constituency office exempt from rates

while charities pay through the nose

 

TDs’ lavish offices avoid charge rates while charity shops have to pay their rates

Charity shops in the Taoiseach’s home town of Castlebar are facing demands for thousands of euro in commercial rates – but Enda Kenny’s constituency office is exempt from the charge.

In a lucrative perk introduced some years ago as part of the national valuation regulations, TDs’ offices are exempt from the rates.

But in Castlebar, Co Mayo, charities such as the St Vincent de Paul and Oxfam have rates charged on their premises at the same rate as other commercial premises. The same rules apply to charity shops all over Ireland run by organisations like Age Action Ireland, Aware, Barnardos and the Irish Cancer Society.

“It is outrageous that the Taoiseach’s lavish constituency HQ is a freebie for Enda Kenny as far as rates are concerned while Oxfam and other charities are being crucified,” complained local independent councillor Frank Durkan.

But attempts to make charity shops exempt from commercial rates have met with a stony silence from the Department of Finance.

“When you consider the valuable work done by charity shops in helping the marginalised in society on behalf of the State, the demand for commercial rates is ludicrous” said Paul Hughes of the Irish Charity Shops Association.

A sweet return from the simple fruit of Ire-land’s garden

 

Fruit trees and bushes of all kinds can be planted at any time of year because they are practically all supplied nowadays growing in a pot. But the traditional planting time of November to March is still the best, allowing the plant to take root naturally before the spring growing season.

Unlike vegetables that have to be sown each year, many kinds of fruit need relatively little attention. Loganberry is a good example. This old-fashioned fruit was once common in cottage gardens because it was easily propagated by pinning down a shoot tip.

The fruit is a cross between blackberry and raspberry, and originated in California. It is named after its breeder, one Judge Logan, who made the cross between these two fruits in 1881. It has some of the characteristics of blackberry, such as long trailing stems and a white plug in the fruit when picked, and the earlier fruiting of raspberry.

In Scotland, crosses carried out between blackberry and raspberry in the Seventies produced the tayberry, named after the River Tay. The tayberry is similar to loganberry but with larger, sweeter fruit, produced in July rather than the July to September fruiting of loganberry.

As loganberry ripens over a longer period of time, this is a good feature if the fruit is to be eaten fresh, spreading out the picking season but, for jam-making, it is best that most of the fruit comes in at the same time. The tayberry is a heavier cropper and more suitable for jam as it needs less sugar added, but many people enjoy the sharp taste of loganberries.

Both kinds of fruit are available as varieties with prickly stems or smooth stems. Both are easily grown planted against a fence or wall and neither suffers much from diseases or pests. They grow best and carry most fruit in a sunny spot but they are sufficiently vigorous to give a crop even when grown in a north-facing position.

Usually one plant is enough, spanning a length of fence of four metres or more, and no pollinator is needed. When the stems have finished cropping, or at any time during winter, the shoots that have cropped are pruned out close to ground level and the new shoots tied in as replacements.

These fruits and many others are available to buy in garden centres now and can be planted at any time in the coming weeks. Choose the site carefully and prepare the soil well, working in some compost to get the young plant off to a good start.

Two Gardaí injured in Donegal attempted wire theft ‘three youths held’

 

Three juveniles have been arrested after they attempted to steal a quantity of copper wire from an Eircom yard in Bridgend in Donegal.
A Garda patrol car was rammed as the three tried to make their getaway, and two members of the Gardai have been treated for minor injuries.
Two of the young men are being held at Buncrana Garda Station, while the third is receiving medical treatment at Letterkenny General Hospital.
His condition is not thought to be life-threatening.

US researchers map carbon emissions at street level

US scientists have developed new software that can accurately measure greenhouse gas emissions down to individual buildings and streets.

The system combines information from public databases with traffic simulations and energy consumption models.

Researchers believe it could help identify the most effective places to cut emissions.

They say it could aid international efforts to verify reductions in carbon.

We have to have confidence in the numerical value of something. We have to have the same level of confidence about a unit of emissions”

While the United States has one method of measuring carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases at national level, there is little consistency at city and local level.

Details of the new system are published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology.

According to the scientists from Arizona State University this new measuring system, called Hestia, changes all that.

The research team used data from a number of sources including air pollution reports, traffic counts and tax offices. This is then combined with a modelling system for quantifying CO2 emissions down to individual building level.

Dr Kevin Gurney is one of the leaders of the project. He told BBC News that his team knows the system is working because it is consistent with existing information on emissions.

“We can go to any city in the US and do the quantification and we know it will be utterly consistent from city to city and consistent from city all the way up to national level,” he said.

So far the system has been used on Indianapolis and work is ongoing with Los Angeles and Phoenix. The researchers are learning a great deal about emissions in the urban environment.

“You realise how large a source electricity production is. It tends to swamp the signal in cities. And things like traffic jams and slow downs in traffic, that’s what really hits you,” said Dr Gurney.

The scientists behind the system say it can be extremely useful for cities, helping them to target where to make emissions cuts.

Once those cuts have been made, the system can verify their effect. Verification is also a hugely contentious issue at international negotiations on a global climate treaty.

The scientists are able to provide 3-D pictures of where, when and how emissions are occurring

Many developed countries are concerned that any cuts in carbon agreed by developing nations might not actually happen. Could this system help? Kevin Gurney believes it would.

“Right now we are exploring the use of remote sensing but the nice thing is that now we can use Hestia to calibrate the remote sensing in the cities we have done. Through that we may be able to infer a lot better estimate of emissions in Rio or Delhi,” he said.

The researchers believe that the system can be used to give greater credibility to carbon trading.

“Nobody buys a stock that’s ten dollars plus or minus five dollars,” said Kevin Gurney. “We have to have confidence in the numerical value of something. We have to have the same level of confidence about a unit of emissions.”