CONCERN GROWS OVER IMPORTED CHICKENS
May 24 2003 -  By Richard Mulligan


BBC's investigative programme, Panormana, revealed last night that more evidence has been found of deliberate adulteration of chicken used in the UK's catering industry and the programme traced the source of the problem back to Holland.

And Ulster Unionist Agriculture spokesman, George Savage has called for more cash to be provided so the Food Standards Agency can carry out more tests on chicken.

"The future for food and for farming lies in quality and in safety and we must be nurturing our farming sector far more than at present," said Mr Savage.

In March the Food Standards Agency (FSA) and the Trading Standards Institute (TSI) announced that many frozen chicken breasts imported to the UK contained added protein designed to retain water and make the meat appear more substantial.

Further testing found some of protein was of pork origin even though labelled Halal - raising concern among ethnic communities.

Trading standards officials helped the Panorama programme by providing in-depth advice and interviews over the last six months.

David Walker, a spokesperson for the TSI, said: "It is clear that some brands of imported frozen chicken meat continue to be adulterated. The authorities in the countries in question are fully aware of the nature of the problem.

"The time for action is long overdue. Trading standards officers will continue to take action against importers, who have a moral and legal obligation to check the quality of the food they sell," he said.

The FSA/TSI tests found pork protein in half the catering chicken marked Halal - denoting food safe for Muslims to eat under Islamic law.

In all the cases the chicken came from processors in the Netherlands.

The tests were conducted as a follow-up to a survey in December 2001 which found widespread use of catering chicken with added protein and water - a method designed to " bulkup" the weight.

While the practice is not illegal the added ingredients must be included on the label.

Mr Savage said: "The fact that beef proteins are being injected into chicken meat and that thousands of tons of this are being imported into the UK annually is disturbing.

"It is a worrying development that beef DNA can now be manipulated scientifically by unscrupulous manufacturers so that food safety tests cannot detect its presence in chicken meat and that this beef protein is being sold by protein suppliers in Germany to these Dutch chicken companies."

He said: "Apparently this has been going on for over a decade and in another worrying development, it has been revealed by Panorama that the source of this beef protein is cow hides from Brazil. This raises the whole issue of the trade in non-European sourced meat and in animal residues.

"It was reckoned by the Daily Telegraph that some 60,000 tons of this chicken meat was imported annually which represents about 40% of our total chicken meat imports. The fact that the offenders are foreign nationals makes the problem more difficult to tackle, requiring diplomatic action."

Mr Savage added: "It was very interesting that a private Irish Laboratory was able to detect the presence of these beef proteins in the imported chicken meat while a UK Food Standards Agency test did not.

"Clearly there are major cost implications involved here and the FSA, which does an excellent job, must be given additional funding by the Government to resource the carrying out of more sensitive tests which could detect the beef protein."

He went on: "The only way to avoid the recurrence of these food scandals is for Government to boost the Fairtrade approach to food in our shops. The Fairtrade mark is the only way to break away from what the Guardian newspaper recently called the خfear chain which food production was becoming if it relied on imported meat.

"The public are demanding safe food and the best way to ensure this is that food is sourced from our own farms with provable links from farmer to the customer's table. This will mean more expensive food but it will be safe food.

"Our own UUP policy of a Fair Price Commission would be the mechanism which would enable Fairtrade benchmarks to take hold," he said.