ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now joining me now to discuss some of the issues about horsemeat is the Chair of the Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Ann McIntosh. You were listening to what the Secretary of State had to say there, Ann McIntosh, I mean are you confident that a) they’ve got a grip on it and b) that they didn’t miss some of the warning signs earlier on?

ANN McINTOSH: I am delighted with the action that Owen and the government are taking and I would go further in one sense that I would send in the Food, I would ask the Commission to send in the Food and Veterinary Laboratory Office because they are actually the ones that can do the testing. Owen is absolutely right, this testing should have gone on for all the period of time. I would also like to see that the supply chain now is examined. It is absolutely right that retailers step up to the plate, that retailers, the processers themselves have said that they are just as part of the food chain as this. In my view this is criminal activity, I’d be very surprised if the criminal activity had taken place in this country, that’s why it is absolutely vital that while it is still live within the food chain, even in the smaller proportions that we’re seeing, that we go back and investigate every aspect of the supply chain.

DM: It seems that they were raised at least in the spring of 201, surely it could have been investigated then, they could have started this then?

AM: What we don’t know is the letter actually just found its way to the FBA, what we do now is an ex-director of the Food Standards Agency has now said that what we raised, particularly those with a constituency interest when they had closed down a production of perfectly safe mince off the bone, that we would be faced with a labelling challenge and possible contamination. That was concluded last year but no one expected it to take place quite so quickly as it has.

DM: Do you think it is, this is a question I put to Mr Paterson, do you think it could spread in the sense we have already had Staffordshire saying we found, not horsemeat but we found in beef products chicken and lamb and all kinds of other meats there that people, okay it may not be a threat to their health but they want to know if it’s in there.

AM: We are very keen and we stressed this in the report that perhaps we should be checking, and I don’t wish to be alarmist but perhaps there is good cause to check for other species but my own suspicion, and this is a personal view, is that it looks as though, now they have been found out, it is working its way through the food supply chain and that particular contamination I hope will come to an end. But this is European wide, it has to be a European solution but we will not reassure the public until we actually get to the bottom of where it entered the food chain. One thing that is good news for the British farmer is to see how much beef and other meat sales have gone up and perhaps we are making our own processed at home with British beef and meat.

DM: We are talking about Europe wide dimension to it and the suggestion that some of these horses may have come from Mexico. Ultimately once they’re within the EU there’s not much we can do about it but British consumers quite rightly are saying why don’t we have a ban on imports for the time being? We know where the British stuff comes from, why don’t we stop the rest of it?

AM: It is a very technical and a very complicated area of the law but there is this consumer protection law under EU so they have different regulations for each type where Cassis de Dijon was being passed off with a much inferior product and for a limited time …

DM: This is the drink?

AM: This is the drink that goes into your very fancy champagne I’m told but it is obviously very important for France that they rooted out where that came from and the implication was that until such time that they found the source and removed the passing off, that they were for a limited period of time allowed to suspend the import of just a very specific product. Now this must be just as galling for the Romanians, the French, the Irish, the Poles so I would have thought there may be some temporary measure to suspend the imports but if it looks as though the contamination has worked its way through, that there is no more new lines coming in, then perhaps we don’t need to be quite so reactive as that.

DM: And that same question I put to the Secretary of State there, is this one of the competencies of the EU? There is this question about whether the European bodies are a help or a hindrance here, if Britain could act on its own here presumably we could get to the bottom of this more quickly, we could put in a temporary ban, we could test what we like and we could stop what we like coming in?

AM: Well no, I would argue that we can use the European regulations, and I did practice EU law so I have a different slant on it, but we can use these to our advantage and it is a European market, that’s why we went in. The farmers want to export our meat and our meat products to Europe so I believe it’s better to be fighting for Britain’s interests and negotiating the regulations.

DM: But I remember during BSE the French banning our meat at the drop of a hat, they didn’t bother with any EU regulations.

AM: No, well this is … and it is the Commission that has banned for a temporary period this meat product in my constituency so it can be done.

DM: Okay, well good to talk to you. Ann McIntosh, thank you very much indeed.