Authorities in Poland to investigate horse DNA source
Minister for Agriculture Simon Coveney said all ingredients sourced in Ireland and Britain tested free from equine DNA.
Authorities in Poland are to begin an investigation into how traces of horse DNA found its way into burgers made by Silvercrest Foods, Minister for Agriculture Simon Coveney said today.
It was revealed last night that Polish ingredients were the likely source of horse meat found at 29 per cent in a Tesco burger made at the Silvercrest plant, which is owned by the ABP Food Group.
Three burgers produced since the start of January by Silvercrest Foods had tested positive for horse DNA, at levels of seven per cent, 3.6 per cent and 1.2 per cent, relative to beef content.
Uzbek national dish – plov with horse meat
Mr Coveney said the burger which had seven per cent horse DNA contained a significant amount of Polish ingredients and when that raw material was tested, it contained 4.1 per cent horse DNA.
The other burgers also contained the Polish material which he described as a beef product made from low value cuts and trimmings. The raw ingredients that went into the burger with 29 per cent horse meat are no longer available as that burger was produced in November.
Speaking on RTÉ radio this afternoon, the Minister said he had been speaking with his counterparts in Poland, who confirmed an investigation would be undertaken.
“We have tested about 150 samples of ingredients and burgers, and all of the ingredients that came from Irish sources and British sources have tested absolutely clean of any equine DNA,” Mr Coveney said.
“The fact that this problem was effectively imported from another member state, in this case Poland, is in some ways I think a vindication of the Irish food industry, and also sends a very strong signal as to the strength of regulatory regime, in terms of testing and inspection.”
Mr Coveney said he had spoken “at length” with senior representatives from Tesco and Burger King, which said last week it was replacing Silvercrest Foods as its supplier.
“I am working with ABP to try to reassure those customers because they are very big customers for the Irish beef industry,” he said.
“We have a commitment from ABP that in the future they will source all product for the Silvercrest plant from Ireland and the UK. They will change management at that plant, that they will remove all existing product from that plant and either destroy it or put it in cold storage somewhere else, so we will have a clean plant that has been sanitised.
“Most importantly, there is agreement that we will have permanent supervision in that plant indefinitely into the future until we can give the kind of consumer reassurance that is necessary over time to rebuild faith and trust in that plant.”
A statement from ABP last night confirmed that a new management team would be appointed to the facility and said ABP had undertaken a group reorganisation.
“With immediate effect responsibility for the Silvercrest business will transfer to ABP Ireland – the Irish chilled beef division. The sister business in the UK, Dalepak Foods, will come under the immediate control of ABP UK – the UK chilled beef business.”
A statement from Tesco welcomed the news and said the findings correlated with the results of its own investigations at the plant. “We will give detailed consideration to all the findings during next week,” the statement said.
Burger King also welcomed the confirmation that no horse DNA was found in tests of its products.
“We want to apologise to our guests who may have been concerned by the news of a breach at one of our suppliers and we will dedicate ourselves to determining where the breakdown occurred, what lessons can be learned and what additional measures should be taken to ensure that we always provide our guests the high quality products they expect from us,” the statement said.
IFA president John Bryan said these results should “provide the necessary reassurance to consumers and buyers about the integrity and reputation of Irish-produced food”.
The Irish Cattle and Sheep Farmers’ Association president Gabriel Gilmartin said farmers had been let down by industry.
“There are now serious questions to be asked about why Polish ingredients were going into Irish beef burgers even though Ireland is the largest exporter of beef in the Northern hemisphere,” he said.
“ICSA welcomes the new stringent terms that will apply but Irish farmers will feel very let down by what has happened. The Department must learn the lesson that there has been too much focus on farms and not enough on meat processors.”
Could those be Irish green shoots that we see appearing after all?
The 37% increase in first-half profits at recruitment group CPL and the decision by An Bord Pleanala to grant Intel planning permission to extend its Leixlip plant are further signs that, after five years, the Irish economy is finally beginning to recover.
However, with British Prime Minister David Cameron promising a referendum on that country’s EU membership, the outlook remains uncertain.
Last week Anne Heraty’s CPL recruiters reported a 37 per cent increase in operating (pre-interest) profits to €5.8m and a 13 per cent increase in turnover to €162m for the six months to the end of December 2012.
These results were the best set of interims from CPL since the half-year ended December 2007. And when it comes to gauging the health of the Irish economy CPL is a good company to keep an eye on.
When employers start to cut back, recruitment and temporary staff agencies such as CPL are among the first to feel the chill.
As the Celtic Tiger turned into a pussycat, CPL’s half-year operating profits collapsed from €11.4m in the six months to December 2007 to less than €1.7m two years later. Since then operating profits at CPL have been gradually recovering.
However, the nature of CPL’s business has changed during the downturn. It had 8,500 temporary staff on its books at the end of December, an 8 per cent increase on the number at the end of June. In fact the vast bulk of CPL’s revenues, over 95 per cent, now come from temporary staff rather than traditional recruitment.
According to Ms Heraty: “The group has continued to develop our competence in the provision of fully outsourced services that are complex and difficult to replicate and which usually require a combination of a European language and a technical skill.”
She also stated that such outsourcing allowed client companies “to recruit personnel based on the variable demands of the business”.
Translated into plain English this means that many multinationals have effectively contracted out most of their staffing requirements to companies such as CPL. This allows them to effectively sidestep most of the obligations imposed on employers by Irish labour law as the bulk of “their” workers are not employed by them but temporary staff hired on short-term contracts by the recruitment company.
However, in an economy with an unemployment rate touching 15 per cent, jobs routed through the likes of CPL are still a heck of a lot better than no jobs at all.
And following the IDA’s success in increasing net direct employment at foreign-owned companies by a further 6,500 in 2012, the early indications are that 2013 will be another good year. On Thursday, An Bord Pleanala announced that it had approved the granting of planning permission to Intel to extend its Leixlip plant.
While there has been no announcement from Intel on how many extra jobs will be created, the headcount at Leixlip, which already stands at 4,500, is likely to increase even further if construction of the extension goes ahead.
That’s the good news from last week. The bad news is that British Prime Minister DavidCameron has promised an in/out referendum on Britain’s EU membership in 2017. This has enormous potential implications for this country. Addressing a conference in Dublin on Thursday, British Business Secretary Vince Cable warned of the “nightmare scenario” of Britain leaving the EU and stated that such an outcome would be bad for both his country and Ireland.
But will Britain actually end up leaving the EU? Mr Cameron has stated that he merely wishes to “renegotiate” Britain’s membership terms and that he will campaign for a ‘Yes’ vote if a satisfactory deal can be agreed. The problem with such an approach is that it threatens to unleash forces Mr Cameron won’t be able to control.
Many members of his Conservative Party aren’t rational Eurosceptics but swivel-eyed Europhobes to whom any deal with Brussels, no matter how advantageous to Britain, would be unacceptable. They want out regardless. The fact that, as Mr Cable pointed out last week, withdrawal from the EU could be very bad news indeed for Britain matters not a jot to these fanatics.
But will such a referendum ever actually take place? The timing is interesting. Mr Cameron’s coalition with the Liberal Democrats, the most Europhile of the British political parties, meant that he was never going to get a referendum in this parliament, which is scheduled to last until May 2015.
An EU referendum in 2017 would take place almost halfway through the next parliament, assuming that Mr Cameron wins the next British general election and is still prime minister. But will he? With the British economy still mired in deep recession and the opposition Labour Partywell ahead in the polls a single-party Conservative government is the least likely outcome after the next British general election. Far more likely is that Labour ends up in government either on its own or in coalition with the Liberal Democrats.
All of which means we should pay far more attention to good news now rather than the outside prospect of bad news in four years time.
Constitutional Convention votes for lowering Irish voting age
BUT AGAINST SHORTER PRESIDENTIAL TERM
The Constitutional Convention has voted in favour of lowering the voting age, but has rejected reducing the presidential term.
At its meeting in Dublin, 52% of delegates voted in favour of lowering the voting age.
Of these, 48% were in favour of lowering the age to 16 with 39% selecting 17.
A reduction in the Presidential term from seven to five years was opposed by 57%.
The chairperson of the Constitutional Convention Tom Arnold said today was the first day of allowing Irish citizens to have a meaningful input into some of the most important matters facing society
President Michael D urges Irish children not to engage in bullying
The President, Michael D Higgins, has urged young people not to get involved in cyberbullying or ganging up on vulnerable classmates.
He said he has been encouraged by the responses of young children as he appeals to them on the issue in visits to schools.
“I have been speaking of the importance of ensuring that no child is ever pushed to the margin, or the collective used against a child suffering from deep, deep loneliness,” he said.
“New and sophisticated technology is now available and competes for pupils’ attention and may assist them, but has also led to the increased current danger of deeper and more far reaching bullying of vulnerable children,” he said.
The President told the Irish Primary Principals’ Network annual conference a proper aim of education and a true measure of a country is being able to value its shared health, and have the mental wellbeing of its citizens — and particularly its smallest ones — as its concern.
He was greatly concerned by the IPPN survey finding, featured in yesterday’s Irish Examiner, that one in five principals are reporting that more pupils are arriving at school hungry.
“In 2013, in our Irish Republic, the Irish people do not want this,” he said. “I know that very well from my own many visits to such places as St Munchin’s in Limerick where 500 children are fed every day — so they can learn properly by at least not being hungry — by wonderful and dedicated people.”
He said that teachers should not be impeded by bureaucratic requirements or testing exercises from sharing their talents and encouraging creativity.
Seán Cottrell, director of the IPPN, said principals strive to achieve the very best for the children in their care. But, he said, failure by the Department of the Education to address the additional workload created for them by new rules and schemes will adversely affect the quality of education.
“These initiatives arrive first in glossy publications, but to get them into action is a big challenge,” said Mr Cottrell. “The school is seen as the place to cure all society’s ills, but while we have a role to play it should be through curriculum and not through add-ons when there is only half an hour a week for social, personal and health education.
“If the wastage in the university sector was applied to primary education, we’d be well-funded. The big focus now is on fourth-level and more PhDs, but unless you get primary education well funded, the education system will crumble upwards from the bottom.”
He said two thirds of primary principals are also teachers and called for the same support as available in the North, where teaching principals have one non-teaching day a week for administration work, compared to one in every two-and-a-half weeks for some principals here.
Department of Education secretary general Seán Ó Foghlú said the burden associated with a range of new initiatives is recognised but schools are being given more autonomy in return for greater accountability to the department and parents.
Yoga shows highly promising signs of progress in psychiatric cases
Yoga has shown promising results in in major psychiatric disorders such as depression, schizophrenia, ADHD and sleep complaints, say findings from a review of over 100 studies.
Emerging evidence in support of the 5,000-year-old Indian practice is “highly promising” and showed that yoga may not only help to improve symptoms,
But also may also prevent stress-related mental illnesses, said P. Murali Doraiswamy, professor of psychiatry and medicine at Duke, who co-authored the study with Meera Balasubramaniam.
Yoga has positive effects on mild depression, affecting more than 350 million people globally, says WHO and sleep complaints, even in the absence of treatments, and improves symptoms tied to schizophrenia and ADHD which is linked with inattentiveness, over-activity, impulsivity, among children, the journal Frontiers in Psychiatry reports.
Yoga is a popular exercise and is practiced by 15.8 million adults in the US alone, according to a survey by the Harris Interactive Service Bureau, and its holistic goal of promoting psychical and mental health is widely held in popular belief, according to a Duke statement.
“However, yoga has become such a cultural phenomenon that it has become difficult for physicians and patients to differentiate legitimate claims from hype. Our goal was to examine whether the evidence matched the promise,” said Doraiswamy.
The review by Duke University Medical Centre of more than a 100 studies, focusing on 16 high-quality controlled studies looked at the effects of yoga on depression, schizophrenia, ADHD, sleep complaints, eating disorders and cognition problems.
Benefits of the exercise were found for all mental health illnesses included in the review, except for eating disorders and recognition problems as the evidence for these was conflicting or lacking.
Yoga was found to influence key elements of the human body thought to play a role in mental health in similar ways to that of anti-depressants and psychotherapy.
One study found that the exercise affects neurotransmitters, inflammation, oxidative stress, lipids, growth factors and second messengers.
Heat from North American cities causing warmer winters,
A study finds
All those buildings and all those people in New York are generating heat thousands of miles away.
Researchers say extra heat generated by huge cities explains additional warming not explained by existing climate models
Those who wonder why large parts of North America seem to be skipping winter have a new answer in addition to climate change: big city life.
A study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, found that the heat thrown off by major metropolitan areas on America’s east coast caused winter warming across large areas of North America, thousands of miles away from those cities.
Winter warming was detected as far away as the Canadian prairies. In some remote areas, temperature rose by as much as 1 degree C (1.8F) under the influence of big cities, which produced changes in the jet stream and other atmospheric systems, the study found.
Researchers found a similar pattern in Asia, where major population centres resulted in strong warming in Russia, northern Asia, and eastern China.
On the flip side, however, changes in atmospheric conditions had an opposite effect in Europe – lowering autumn temperatures by as much as 1 degree C (1.8F).
The extra heat generated by big cities was just a fraction of the warming caused by climate change or urbanisation, the researchers said. But the study did help scientists account for additional warming that was not explained by existing climate models.
“What really surprised us was that this energy use was a tiny amount, and yet it can create such a wide impact far away from the heat source,” said Guang Zhang, a scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, who led the study. “We didn’t expect it to be this much.”
Global temperature averages were barely affected by the big city heat, barely .01C on average. But big cities had a noticeable impact on regional temperatures almost on a continental scale.
Researchers said the extra heat should be taken into account in future climate projections.
Scientists have for years been trying to untangle how big cities – with the sprawl of buildings and cars – affect climate.
The study suggests cities themselves have far-reaching effects on climate, in addition to the climate pollution caused by the burning of fossil fuels.
