"Natural", "Artisan"? - nonsense? Get involved in the discussion on use of food marketing terms in Ireland

This is something that constantly amazes me; I pick up a pack of Danish sausages in the supermarket (often distributed by big Irish brands) who neither state the country of origin or make ridiculous claims of it being a cutsey farm product rather than mass-produced factory food using the lowest acceptable standards, sold at the lowest possible prices. 

The Food Safety Authority of Ireland have announced a public consultation on the use of food marketing terms in Ireland. Words like "natural" "traditional" and "farmhouse" are used liberally on food labels but carry no meaning or no protection in the case where food is actually produced by hand in small quantities. Consumers are confused and many believe that like "organic" these terms carry a defined meaning.

 

As this has been an issue for many years Food and Drink Industry Ireland, (IBEC), the Artisan Forum and Consumers Association of Ireland have now developed the draft code of practice aimed at protecting the integrity of certain marketing terms on food and the interests of consumer and the small food industry.

This Code of Practice outlines the general legal requirements but in addition will provide an agreed set of rules for the food industry concerning the use of the following marketing terms to describe foods placed on the Irish market:

• Artisan/Artisanal
• Farmhouse
• Traditional
• Natural

I know that many people in both the food and consumer sector are concerned with this so now is the chance to have your say.

 

The consultation will run for 8 weeks and the closing date for responses is 14 May 2014. All feedback and comments will be considered in advance of the FSAI publishing a final industry Code of Practice later in the year. To let your opinion be known please check out the following link:

 

http://www.fsai.ie/news_centre/press_releases/National_Consultation_on_the_Use_of_Food_Marketing_Terms_Opens_19032014.html

Pls share and let people know in the small food sector #Irishfood

The American burger is unsafe to eat. Unless we get our food system in Europe under control we're heading the same direction

[This post is based on an Opinion piece I wrote in the Irish Independent on Saturday, it has been updated to include the latest updates on horsemeat] 

As Irish horse slaughterer B&F Meats was announced on Friday to be re-packaging horsemeat for export as beef, it seems the crisis is back on our doorstep here in Ireland. What we feared might be the case - Irish equines going illegally into the food chain has proved to be true, and there will be further  resulting ramifications for the food sector, let alone legal and perhaps criminal fallout. 

Foods sold in Ikea and Birds Eye are the latest big name brands to find horsemeat in their products. As we are drip fed more information about the scale of the horsemeat problem, Irish consumers feel unsure about what other nasties may lurk in our shopping trolleys.

At the heart the horsemeat issue is the real cost of cheap food. Much of the comment has centred around “if you eat cheap food, well what do you expect?” But

research shows value ranges and cheap food are not just purchased by the 10% of Irish people living in food poverty (Dept of Social Protection). They are bought by ordinary families whose pattern of shopping is based on value and are now worth 46% of our €8.9 billion grocery market.

Food itself has become cheap, and Irish consumers across many income brackets buy own brand or discounted value ranges. This scandal has revealed that it’s becoming harder to pin the problem on simply cheap burgers and consumers are listening to contradictory advice. In between refuting the FSAI’s claims that his burgers tested positive for horsemeat, Malcolm Walker head of retail chain Iceland told BBC this week that he wouldn’t eat other UK supermarket’s value lines as “there’d be other things in there”.

Dumped meat products

The pressure on food to be cheap across the board and moves towards less regulation and testing are at the heart of the problem. As we’re drip fed more brands containing horsemeat, farm ministers in Brussels were wrangling with the CAP budget which pays farmers to produce for retailers at knockdown prices. The EU’s cheap food policy has worked to a fashion – to deliver affordable food to consumers, but how can we say it’s a success when the player closest to the consumer – the supermarkets, are the ones taking the most margin?  Subsidising farmers and paying for proper regulation at least ensures good food quality at farm level. Farmers and farming programmes currently get 42% of the EU budget. It will be less this year and by 2020 set to be reduced to 33%. So as we reduce subsidy, and food gets more expensive to produce, how on earth do we think quality or food safety is going to improve?

As has been asked many times “Why have CAP? Why pay farmers for producing food whatsoever?” Well let’s look at the US, where subsidy exist only for particular foodstuffs like fructose corn syrup which strangely dominates snack foods, food manufacturing and is blamed for America’s obesity epidemic. US is the free market unregulated end of the model. It is also the model with the most problems for those who eat its food.

Tyson Foods

The involvement of American beef giant JBS in the horsemeat crisis is hardly a surprise. Last year one of their biggest beef processors Tyson Foods was found guilty of using false books and bribing meat plant inspectors. US beef contains antibiotics and steroids, and in the opinion of most American food writers the iconic American burger is unsafe to eat.

Massive recalls of beef for ecoli and chicken and salmonella tainted eggs characterise a regular year in the US food chain. Recent research by the University of Minnesota found evidence of fecal contamination in 69% of the pork and beef and 92% of the poultry samples in retail outlets. Factory farming is blamed for large scale antibiotic resistance in the human population while the use of “pink slime" in burgers - mechanically recovered meat treated with ammonia was recently dropped by MacDonald’s in the US after public outcry. 

pink slime filler

Liberalisation of farming and food manufacture has been a disaster for US consumers.  Americans get sicker and die younger than people in any other wealthy nation. Even the best-off Americans – those who have health insurance, a college education, a high income and healthy behaviour are sicker than their peers in comparable countries, says a report by the US National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine.

Light touch regulation doesn’t work in food. Under the Tory Government the UK’s Food Standards Agency’s budget has been slashed and food testing fallen in some areas by up to a third. In Ireland we have maintained rigorous tests on farms by the FSAI and EHOs. As food companies become more vertically integrated and dominant, it’s crucial that budget for food regulation and standards in production and manufacture are not only maintained but scaled up in Ireland and the EU.

In recent years the Department of Agriculture insisted in there was plenty of legislation in place for the identification of horses going into the food chain. In the wake of the present crisis I asked if they have plans or budget for more checks at factories and putting vets back on ports? The answer was no.

Regulation and upholding standards on farms, subsidising farmers properly to produce food above the cost of production are essential to maintain a food chain that’s safe. We may not like where we’ve got in our food picture but by further letting go of the reins we will pay for it, in the realm of our own health. 

Hate to say I told you so #horsemeat

One of the frustrating things about Europe's current horsemeat crisis is that welfare groups in Ireland warned the Department of Agriculture many times about the problems of horses being transported live to Europe. These animals were known not to have passports and dealers openly admitted (also documented in the UCD report of 2010) that forging passports to get horses into factories wasn't an issue.

For many years I have helped the Irish Horse Welfare Trust to try and heighten awareness of the neglect of horses and the issue of live transport. For cattle and sheep transported to Europe or elsewhere there are strict regulations on travel times and welfare, none of which exist for horses. Horses are not checked at Irish ports before they travel for health or individual identification. This free movement of horses under the tripartite agreement between England, Ireland and France was identified in the UCD report as detrimental to bio-hazard controls - laughable now we have proof that many of these horses were going for human consumption. Authorities here denied that Irish horses could be going into the food chain until a Dutch processor in Nijnegan was revealed last week to be selling Irish and Dutch horsemeat as beef. This piece of news closed the circle in effect, though it's still not clear whether this meat came from carcasses killed in Irish abattoirs or from the live trade.

www.IHWT.ie

What we also know is that of the five Irish plants who were granted licenses to slaughter horses to cope with the surplus of horses after our boom years, only two are operating horse slaughtering at present. Why? Because there are much larger numbers (the department estimates around 16,000 horses) going out live on lorries to Europe.

horse transport

If 12500 equines were killed in licensed slaughterhouses (excluding the knackery system) here in 2011, why the larger number of animals going for live transport with its additional costs? Think about it. You have to have a passport (albeit very easy to obtain) to bring a horse to a factory here. Not so if it is killed abroad, even in the UK. The USPCA have identified false passports and forged veterinary signatures used on passports of animals going on the live trade, some which have been dosed with bute or other drugs. So of course the numbers are bigger - it's far easier to get them into a factory in Poland or Italy than in Ireland, as loose as the system here is.

I have two horses, both of whom I could apply for a passport for tomorrow from the 12 agencies allowed to issue them and get both into a factory next week. That's no reflection on B and F Meats et al. It is an illustration of how the passport and identification scheme doesn't work. This situation has been pointed out to the department many times - by myself, the IHWT, the USPCA and the SPCAs involved with horse welfare and rescue. The lack of regulation has been boiling under the surface for so long that it comes to no surprise to anyone involved in horse welfare or movement that there is horsemeat in the food chain. Horses are sold in Ireland for as little as 10 euro. Last year I loaded up a horse with an IHWT officer outside Bray that had been stabbed in the shoulder and was living on a piece of scrap land with no feed or water. It had been sold to a 10 year old child for 30 euro. Doubtless, its destiny was a lorry to Europe before we got hold of it.

An IHWT project on urban horse welfare in Limerick

What has been of little mention throughout this debate is the welfare issues involved here. Horses are put on lorries that are injured, about to foal or dying. Can you imagine the hellish journey these animals go through without food or water to be slaughtered in hellish conditions like those filmed by hidden cameras at the UK abattoir.

What the horsemeat scandal has revealed is there is overwhelming problems with the equine identification and movement system. Vets need to go back into ports, and the passport system enforced. Having a scheme in place is nonsense without enforcement.

These points were put to the Department of Agriculture's chief veterinary office Martin Blake on Primetime by broadcaster Claire Byrne and myself in a segment on the horsemeat issue. It seems there is little admission of the scale of the problem or how long it has been going on for. All I can hope is that recent events will speed up the will to look again at the tripartite agreement. Something radical needs to happen about the welfare and slaughter issues at the heart of this trade, let alone the dangers for us humans the consumers. You can view the segment at the link below.

http://www.rte.ie/news/player/prime-time/2013/0218/

Irish food culture is a game of two halves, where those at the bottom will suffer the most

Irish horses destined for the food chain

As the horsemeat scandal widens to include giant food labels like Nestle and the worlds biggest beef processor JBS, again we see food fraud not happening at farm level but at secondary processing level and the trade of "beef" in a snakes and ladders game encompassing a global set of players.

In short, the DNA tests carried out in Ireland by the FSAI opened a Pandora's Box of food chain nightmares. As the crisis sucks in more countries, it may seem like vindication for the Irish beef sector but is of little value to us consumers, especially those who shop at the lower end of food budgets, relying on processed foods and ready meals as family staples.


What the horsemeat scandal reveals is that Ireland's food culture is a tale of two halves. At one end of the scale, 'Artisan' meats like Aberdeen Angus Rib Eye and wild Irish game star on restaurant menus. Irish food has never been more vogueish. It is gushed over, photographed and blogged about on the 400-plus food blogs dedicated to Irish food alone.

Boning hall at a processor

On the other side of the Irish eating experience are the €1 fast food hamburger. The rashers that are retailing this week at €1 a pack. The Tesco Everyday Value burgers that sold for €1.41 (17 cent for a burger) until the FSAI revealed that at least one of them contained as much as 29pc equine DNA.

As family income crashed in recent years, so did our grocery spend. While foodies shopped at classy delicatessens, award-winning butchers and farm gates, on the poor side of town, consumers flocked to the discounters and got their grocery spend down from €200 a week to €60.

In a depressed marketplace, the Irish supermarkets engaged each other in aggressive price wars. Since 2005, food prices in the UK have increased by as much as 35pc. By comparison, prices in Ireland rose by only 3 to 4pc, despite the fact that prices in the euro area as a whole increased by 15pc. Consumers benefited and we trusted the food chain not to let us down. That trust was not to prove well-founded.

The FSAI's initial DNA tests were conducted on 'value' frozen burgers and supermarkets' own-brand ready meals. Did they know something that we didn't?

What became evident was that the system broke down, not on Irish farms but at the secondary processing phase – where meat is ground for burgers, and mixed with beef trim, fillers and a wide range of ingredients for ready meals.

Silvercrest Foods had a chain of at least three different suppliers involved in providing one single ingredient for the product. Exactly how many suppliers are involved in the production of one burger?

Is the price point simply too low to supply safe food? If not, is somebody creaming off the fat and who exactly are they?

Irish farmers get between 30pc and 40pc of the retail price of primary cuts of meat. They claim that there are three big operators in beef in Ireland – ABP, Kepak and Dawn Meats pay roughly the same prices for cattle despite allegedly being in competition.

Map of Europe's horsemeat trail

In late 2012, just as the price of beef in Ireland was hitting a healthy €4 a kilo, it suddenly tailed off despite low supplies in the UK. This gave a 50 cent per kilo advantage on animals killed there. As our biggest export market is the UK, why were factories here paying around two hundred euro less on finished animals?

The lid needs to be lifted on the precise relationship between beef processors and supermarkets. Ironically, just as the horse-burger story broke, the UK government, on the recommendation of the Competition Commission, appointed their grocery ombudsman to monitor the behaviour of supermarkets.

Agriculture Minister Simon Coveney said this week that similar Irish legislation is expected this term. The same promise was made at an Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture four years ago, where I gave evidence on the need to bring in a body to police the unfair balance of power in the system. It wasn't news then, like it isn't now.

It is worrying that what began with cheap food has made its way up the ladder. Horse DNA was found in burgers made by ABP at Silvercrest/ABP for the Co-Operative supermarket in the UK, known for its attention to provenance. Does risky sourcing become a money-making trick as we move further up the chain?

The majority of Irish consumers are caught at the cheap end of the grocery business. It's urgently clear that consumers need protection in the form of a supermarkets' ombudsman. If this is not the time to introduce one, then when is?

The horsemeat in burgers scandal. Are we consumers partly to blame?

We consumers. We love cheap food

Oh how we love cheap food, but then gasp in amazement that it might contain something unpleasant. This week’s shock discovery of horse DNA in Irish burgers grabbed headlines around the world. But are we, the consumers also to blame for this debacle?

Our lust for a bargain has been mirrored in the advancing market share captured by Lidl and Aldi in Ireland – we’ve fallen in love with the low-cost German model. At a recent dinner party several well heeled guests boasted how they’ve halved their grocery bill by going to discounters. I replied that Aldi is a great buyer of Irish food – purchasing everything from Aberdeen Angus beef, sparkling water, artisan cheese and yoghurts for its own brand range. Food producers whisper to me that Aldi pay on time with “no messing around”. They’re only too glad to board the German steamroller.

Meat processing for burgers

Yet our desire for cheap food and the lengths the food chain will go to supply it are central to how horse DNA got into our burgers. Supermarkets want profits up, share price up and they do this by driving prices down. Their goal is to pay suppliers as little as possible including those who process beef. But like any product, food has a bottom line from where it can be produced or not. Below that line cost-cutting can put consumers at risk. For this very reason I’ve campaigned at Oireachtas Committee level for a supermarket ombudsman to ensure farmers and food producers can produce our food cleanly and safely.

Irish beef at its best; grass fed and highly traceable

Last year Monaghan chicken farmer Alo Mohan told me they made 56 cent on every chicken. These same chickens are then retailed as low as 2.99 by the supermarket. How can a living breathing animal which has been nurtured, fed and cared for from birth to cost less than a cup of coffee?. And if the farmer is getting 56 cent out of a 2.99 – who is taking the largest cut? The supermarket.

Chicken farmer Alo Mohan

But who’s driving this? Us the consumers.

It may come as a surprise that food prices in Ireland are in fact artificially low and far lower relative to the UK. Since 2005 food prices in the UK have increased by as much as 35%. By comparison, Irish prices are just 3 to 4 per cent above their level of seven years ago despite the euro area as a whole increasing by 15%. In this same period, the price of oil and grain has made the cost of producing food explode. In Ireland, recession and weak consumer demand has kept the supermarkets in razor sharp competition, trying to keep the price of food low despite production costs rising.

As our incomes shrink and bills dropping onto the hall floor are ignored for days no one wants to go out and pay a whopping amount on groceries. But in our desire for value we can end up with products like the supermarket spaghetti bolognese I examined containing just 16% meat. What on earth is in the rest? Most likely what are called food “extenders” and “fillers”.

Extenders and fillers are used to add volume and taste to sausages, burgers, ready meals and any amount of things in our trolleys. They arose from the need to produce lower cost food and can reduce costs by 10-30%. This week our Minister for Agriculture Simon Coveney described the ingredient that carried horse DNA into the Irish burgers as powdered beef-protein additive – a filler used to bulk up cheaply produced burgers.

"Pink slime" was commonly used in US fast food chains

Also common is mechanically separated material from animal carcasses known as mechanically deboned meats (MDM) where meat on bones is ground and processed into a product that then goes into other foods. You might remember the unpleasant “pink slime” story which broke in America recently. This MDM (resembling pink ice cream) was found in many fast food chain burgers. But once it was exposed that ammonia treated to “clean” the slime, fast food chains boycotted it in a desperate bid to calm consumers.

Most of this intense manufacturing takes place in Europe and looks to like the source of our imported horse DNA problem. It’s frustrating that Ireland has the best food ingredients in the world with demanding standards on food safety and traceability. Yet somewhere an ingredient manufacturer has cut costs, or deliberately defrauded other manufacturers and consumers. You won’t find many other countries doing the type of DNA tests the FSAI carried out on meats because frankly they would be too scared about what it might reveal.

What needs to happen quickly is identifying and punishing the supplier who sold this tainted ingredient into Irish burgers. In 1999 the Belgian dioxin crisis cost Belgium 625 million euro and the prime minister his job. Yet the Belgian father and son who knowingly sold machinery oil into animal feed causing widespread PCB poisoning received ridiculous suspended sentences of two years. The penalty for messing up the food chain should be an enormous headline-grabbing event to match the damage done by the event itself. Horse DNA in Irish beef burgers is not acceptable. Who is going to take up the tab for the damage done to our own food sector and jobs?

So what can we do to eat safely and not pay out a fortune? The answer is keep your food chain short and keep things simple. And let’s be honest, this takes work. But putting a small bit of thought into what I buy makes me feel safer about what I feed my children in particular. I buy my meat and vegetables from local shops in the village. I buy store cupboard foods in one big shop about every three weeks in either Superquinn or Aldi picking brands and suppliers I know and trust. Kidney beans, tinned tomatoes, butter beans, chick peas, chilli flakes and herbs are all imported products, my trick here is to buy what has the least added ingredients and cooks well.

If you only want to shop in the supermarket always buy Bord Bia approved beef, pork, chicken and sliced meats for kids lunches. I’ve been on these farms, seen the processing and this is the highest level of auditing in food you’re going to find. I never eat ready meals but cook my own – cottage pies, ratatouilles, warming chillis and soups, freezing half for another day.

Preaching only to buy local and artisan goes over most consumers heads and budget. But buying less complicated foods and ingredients is one way to bypass the extremes of food manufacturing. Remember horsemeat is also present in many snack foods and crisps sold on European supermarket shelves. The more processed something this, the more surprising the ingredients are on the label. Keep things simple is the key, buy Irish and above all enjoy your food. Our food sector employs 200,000 Irish people, let’s hope it can weather this storm. 

Inhumane, poorly regulated and bad for human health. How did horsemeat end up in Irish burgers?

Irish agriculture hit the news worldwide this week with the discovery of horse DNA in supermarket burgers. The affair began on Tuesday when the Food Safety Authority here released results on tests for porcine and equine DNA in 27 Irish supermarket burgers. 13 tested positive for horse DNA.  The product with the highest level (29 per cent) of equine DNA was Tesco Everyday Value burgers. They cost 1.41 for eight burgers but have now been removed from the marketplace. 

These particular burgers contained 17 ingredients: meat content (63 per cent), onion (10 per cent),wheat flour, water, beef fat, soya protein isolate, salt, onion powder, yeast, sugar, barley malt extract, garlic powder, white pepper extract, celery extract and onion extract. One of these ingredients contained horse DNA via what is now identified as a supply chain in the Netherlands or Spain. It was most likely some kind of protein powder filler which are common in burger manufacture. This things go largely under our food radar. All week I've been writing and researching this topic with the discovery  that horse meat could in fact be endemic in the European food chain.

Not only that but horsemeat itself may not be safe to eat. Irish farmers have to jump through hoops to ensure the traceability of their cattle, but the horse trade is subject to little or no regulation and forged documents and passports are common, especially with horses coming from North America and killed in Canadian or Mexican slaughter plants. In Ireland horses are stolen and shipped live as far as Italy where they go into the European food chain, some having been treated with bute or other drugs which are banned substances. 

Ingredient suppliers who may be buying this meat are not subject to the same safeguards as farmers, especially when it comes to low-grade animal protein. That's how horse DNA ended up in Irish burgers. What else it is an ingredient of we will have to wait and see. 

Today I published an analysis of this mess in The Irish Times. You can read it at the link below. In the meantime remember buy local where you can, keep your supply chain short and keep away from processed food. My feeling is that the FSAI's tests on burger meat is only the beginning and authorities must investigate the horsemeat and ingredient trade at large to get to the bottom of what could potentially be an enormous case of food fraud. 

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/weekend/2013/0119/1224329033672.html

Calories on menus, hate it or love it, let your views be known today

This debate has pulled in lots of new voices, divergent views and strong opinion. Is putting calories on menus a health policy that will cripple an already pressurised restaurant sector? Or a badly needed intervention that has proved to have had some success reducing calorie intake, notably in the US.

Today is the final day to let your views be known on the proposed new legislation. The consultation process is being run by the Food Safety Authority of Ireland and has been accepting views from the public and food businesses for a month now. Whatever your feelings, let them be known at www.FSAI.ie.

If you want to learn more about the proposals, and how they could affect you, your health or your business, check out my radio piece with Pat Kenny from last week at the following link. Scroll the player 1hr 36 mins up the timeline; I've tried to include all views and give an overview into what the proposals could mean for all of us

http://www.rte.ie/radio/radioplayer/rteradioweb.html#!rii=9%3A3199527%3A133%3A15%2D02%2D2012%3A

What's the most risky food you've ever eaten, go on, spill

Spaghetti with "best-before July 2009" lurking at the back of the cupboard? Cheddar you've scraped the green bit off before toasting on some 2 day old baguette?

We all eat food that is suspect at some point, wondering idly while we chomp down if we'll die in the middle of the night from our righteous attempt at thrift. A Food Safety Authority survey shows that in fact half of us eat foods past their use-by dates. This is despite the fact that use-by dates are worth paying serious attention to... as opposed to best-before dates which are just a general guide.

As the whole best-before, use-by and sell-by date area is clearly a bit of a mindfield, I wrote the following piece for the Irish Independent to give a clearer outline of foods that we can happily eat beyond their best-before dates, and those that might hit you like a punch in the gut, or worse. Have a look, tell me the most risky item you've ever put in your mouth, and let's compare. Mine wins hands down... I promise

Use By Dates: How to find the balance between being safe and wasting food

Irish Independent February 2nd 2009

Most of us have packets of food lurking at the back of the cupboard which are long past their best-before date. But as so many Irish households cut back on their grocery spend, is it a false economy to eat food that is out of date?

A survey by the Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI) showed that nearly half of us eat foodstuffs which have passed their use-by date. The results, from a group of 1,000 questioned by the FSAI and Teagasc, show that consumers rely on their instinct, as opposed to labelling, to judge if something is safe to eat.

The 46pc of Irish consumers who disregard use-by dates said that they were happy to eat food as long as it "looked and smelled okay". The FSAI think the statistic is worrying and shows Irish consumers are still willing to put their health at risk rather than throw something out...

As the article is quite long, check out the rest of it at the following link (no paywall) and let me know your food horror stories. I won't tell a soul.... I promise

http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/smart-consumer/use-by-dates-how-to-find-the-balance-between-being-safe-and-wasting-food-3007649.html

Like prostitution, food substitution is one of the oldest trades in the book. "We're being codded" Part II

Food substitution or food swindling in order to make money is one of the oldest tricks in the book. While may think what we eat today is dominated by food additives and unnatural manufacturing, our range of foods has to be better than a century ago when particularly urban people were at the complete mercy of food sellers.

Freidrich Engels even wrote about it - pointing out that as working men got their wages on a Saturday in industrial Britain they had to buy their family food on Saturday evening. This was the beginning of what we know today as evening grocery shopping. And as much of it was conducted in candlelight, this was where a lot of the chicanery took place. As the good food was sold off from the morning onwards, the ordinary working person was left with the poor produce that remained by the evening or produce that was discounted precisely because it was foul. Rotten meat was covered with a layer of healthy fat, aged butter was covered with a coating of fresh butter, oranges were boiled to make them weighty and shiny and in the case of fish, their gills were painted red to make them look fresh.



Sadly there are still plenty of people out there willing to pull the wool over our eyes. In 2009 the Food Safety Authority brought two Irish companies to court for the mislabelling of fish. They won their case against one of the companies who was passing off farmed salmon as wild salmon; an altogether rarer and far more expensive product. One of these companies is a very well known fish retailer and wholesaler who got off on a technicality but was nonetheless happy to pass off farmed salmon as wild salmon and collect the huge difference in price for quite some time.


So like prostitution, food substitution - as one of the oldest trades in the book is still very much alive and well. But who's going to take on the villians of the piece? Following this most recent survey on fish mislabelling and recognising the scale of the problem, the FSAI are introducing annual checks for fish and food businesses that fail to keep appropriate traceability records or who are found to be intentionally misleading consumers. They also say they will take repeat offenders to court but for the moment most of them will get off with a verbal warning. Unfortunately that is how the legislation stands. Seems a bit lily-livered to me.


One of the sad facts behind the mislabelling story is that most of the fish that is being passed off as cod is imported. Not only that but much of the white fish we eat is imported. White fish, behind farmed salmon, is the second most popular seafood in this country and the similarities between filleted white fish make substituting species easy to do. Most people don’t know the difference.

In terms of our own lovely local seafood catch, 80% of Irish fish is exported to Europe where there is a ready market in France and Spain for high quality, fresh whole fish. Unfortunately we Irish consumers don't seem to be switched on to how good the product is on our own doorstep and instead eat cheap imports that come from Iceland, the Faroe Islands, and Scandanavia which have been ususally frozen for several days. This imported fish is cheaper, and comes in huge volumes so this makes it more attractive for supermarkets in particular. It also comes filleted, ready for sale and Irish fish just can’t compete.

So, what do we do about cod?

In the FSAI report, fake Cod is the fish that keeps cropping up again and again. In fact nearly three quarters of the "smoked cod" on offer to Irish consumers that the agency tested wasn't cod at all but Pollack, Coley, Saithe or God knows what else. But there's two interesting things that emanate from this - one is that even though stocks are shrinking, Irish shoppers still want to eat cod, whether it's bought in a supermarket or a chipper. So the mislabelling of cod perpetuates the myth that there is plenty of cod about. This means that Irish consumers are failing to adjust our shopping habits and our wallets, to food that is endangered or comes with a high environmental cost.

So what can consumers do to eat more Irish fish and avoid eating something that is falsely labelled? Firstly if they buy their fish locally it’s the easiest possible option. In Dublin you can still buy fish direct off boats coming into Howth, harbour, (pictured) Dun Laoghaire and Dalkey and there are fish dealers in this area who will get you what you want straight from the boat. Local fish mongers, though scarce, are a great option and if it comes to supermarkets, buying Marine Stewardship Council certified fish gives you a certainty that it’s sustainable and has a country of origin label.


A new scheme soon to be brought in by Supervalue will see Irish fish being retailed on their shelves which is traceable straight back to the boat it came in on which is really great.

Ironically, one positive thing coming from this fish mislabelling affair is that it reveals we are patently happy to eat lots of other fish besides cod, and in fact we didn’t seem to notice the difference. But if most of us are happy to eat cheaper fish, the savings from doing so should be made by us, not by someone trying to pull the wool over our eyes.

If you're interested in fish stocks and their sustainability check out Ocean 2012 which is a coalition of groups lobbying for change and sustainable practices in the EU's Common Fisheries Policy. They're at http://www.ocean2012.eu/ and the Irish representation is on twitter at @OCEAN2012IE - they will soon have news coming up on Irish events for European Fish Week June 4th - 12th.

Would you like fries with that? We're being codded, again.

A year on from when I first wrote about the fish labelling scandal going on in Ireland it seems nothing has changed. In the second survey into what exactly we are buying when we purchase "cod", the Food Safety Authority of Ireland has revealed that nearly one in five fish are not what it says on the label. So what are the implications for consumers and does this point to murky goings on in the fish trade?

This most recent survey was carried out in retail outlets, fish shops, hotels, pubs, restaurants and takeaways all over Ireland. The FSAI found that 19% of products it sampled were labelled incorrectly. The largest sector selling us fake cod was takeaways, with 32% of takeaways found to have mislabelled fish produce on sale.

Do takeaways rely on people being either (a) drunk and on their way home from the pub when they buy their "cod" and chips, or (b) their product being so doused in salt and vinegar that your box of fish and chips could be in fact battered Nike trainer with deep fried turnip peelings?

The point is that this isn't so much a food safety issue but common or garden food swindling, based on making money from innocent consumers. Cod is generally an expensive fish and in this case it’s being replaced with other varieties, and food businesses are increasing their own profit margins by selling fake produce.

This survey was undertaken last autumn when cod stocks are traditionally low and found that fish such as pollack, coley or smelt were being sold as cod. At that time cod was about 11 euros a kilo; pollack about 6 or 7 euro a kilo so you stand to make a lot of money if you can replace one with the other.

Okay, so a bit of coley posing as cod won't kill us. However, in terms of food safety, food substitution in the past has had fatal consequences. In North America two people died from eating puffer fish that had been labelled and sold as monkfish; a pretty terrifying outcome. As consumers, we need to have confidence in what it says on the label. Particularly in the EU, we are under the impression that strict policies on labelling and traceability are in place. Instead, what this study reveals is a level of disfunction in the labelling of seafood in Europe.

What’s shocking about this is not the first time that mislabelling of fish has found to be an issue in Ireland. About 12 months ago when I first wrote on the subject UCD did a study on fish and found much the same problem. A quarter of the fish they examined was mislabelled. In one major supermarket chain, seven out of their 16 "cod" products weren't cod. The research calculated that by selling cheaper alternatives, this retailer could be getting inflated profits of between €400,000 to €550,000 per year on Irish cod sales.

So who is doing the duping – is it the supermarkets, the fish and chip shops or is it the fish dealers who are selling them the fish? The FSAI can’t name and shame the outlets or merchants involved in this sting so to speak. They found that some of the mislabelling may be due to a certain amount of ignorance, but a few names popped up in the retail and wholesale side where several instances occurred, especially in the battered and smoked fish. They’re being investigated as this would suggest that it was more than accidental.

Unfortunately the penalities are low even if charges are brought and while you can name and shame an outlet for food safety breaches, mislabelling food comes under “misleading the consumer” which hasn’t huge penalities – most will get a verbal warning, then if they persist be taken to court.

Not very heartening for the consumer is it? Will it take a serious health incident arising from food mislabelling to change the law? Why can't we find out who the worst operators are and therefore make our own choice as consumers to stop being codded at the fish counter? If you want to hear more on this topic I'll soon upload my interview on RTE radio with Pat Kenny teasing through the issue. And no, there won't be any bad jokes, I promise.

In part two of this post, I'll be examining the sometimes hideous, sometimes hysterically funny history of food substitution and I'll have some tips for how to buy Irish fish, that's the genuine article. We've so much great fish in Ireland it's ridiculous that we're buying not only fake product but fake product that's mostly coming from outside the EU. But that's a whole other story... part two coming soon.

Here's me with some sandwiches, best avoid them, I promise

Irish Independent - Smart Consumer: Do you really know how much salt is in your lunchtime sandwich?
By Suzanne CampbellThursday Nov 18 2010

Ignoring the salt cellar at the dinner table might make some of us feel that we're eating more healthily. But avoiding high blood pressure, heart disease and the consequences of eating salt is more difficult than we think as many of us eat high quantities of it without realising.
New research shows that over a teaspoon and a half of salt is eaten every day by most Irish people, causing health risks that we're completely unaware of.

The recommended intake of salt per day is no more than six grams. But the Food Safety Authority of Ireland has found that Irish adults are eating on average 10 grams of salt a day -- putting us at risk of death from heart disease and stroke.

Frequently we don't even know the salt content of many foods that we eat. Meat, fish and dairy products provide about a third of our daily salt intake, with a further 26% provided by bread and rolls.

Other foods that regularly contain high levels of salt are sauces, biscuits, confectionery and breakfast cereals.

The frustrating thing for consumers is that while we may be aware of the dangers of salt, food manufacturers don't always share the same view -- pizzas, ready-meals and the humble sandwich are some of the biggest culprits for high salt content. Sandwiches and ready-meals can contain between 25% and 50% of your daily recommended intake for salt. And using petrol stations for more than a fuel top-up may find you eating more than you bargained for.

A Topaz mixed sandwich containing cheese, chicken and stuffing has three grams of salt -- half your daily allowance. And if you go for an M&S quick dinner option, their Macaroni Cheese ready-meal has 2.4 grams of salt, more than 40% of your daily allowance. But the top score goes to M&S's 12-inch cheese and pepperoni pizza, which contains nearly six grams of salt, your total salt intake for the day.

Tesco doesn't fare much better, with their Finest range Italian salami and mozzarella sandwich containing 2.6 grams of salt, and many of their ready-meals containing half your daily allowance.
As cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in Ireland, the Irish Heart Foundation point out that reducing our intake of salt to six grams a day would save more lives from what is a widespread disease.

Pat Crowley, a GP in Co Kilkenny, explains how salt can work in the body with dangerous consequences. "When you have salt in your bloodstream, your cells have to increase the volume of blood to balance it, and that's the reason blood pressure rises."
Eating too much salt confuses the normal functioning of cells and affects how our systems are balanced.

"Sodium, chloride and potassium constantly work together so that the function of your cells are normal. If these levels are out of kilter or too high, you can develop an abnormality pretty quickly, leading to heart arrhythmia or more seriously, a heart attack."
Many of Dr Crowley's patients find tracking the salt in their diet quite difficult .

"Food manufacturers have always put salt in food as a preservative, so even if you're not sprinkling it on your food it can still be there in large amounts". Salt labelling doesn't help as it's sometimes labelled 'sodium content'. Sodium amounts are smaller than 'salt' as 1.6grams of sodium equal 4 grams of salt. So thinking a chilled Thai green curry is healthy because it has one gram of sodium on the packet isn't the case -- it actually has 2.5 grams of salt.

Indeed "healthy" food options such as wraps and salads can sometimes contain surprising amounts of salt. M&S's Crayfish and Mayo salad contains two grams of salt and their Hoisin Duck Wrap has nearly the same amount. Salad dressings are often hidden sources of salt, as are mayonnaises, sauces and other additions to "healthy" lunchtime options.

Food manufacturers like adding salt because it ties into what we expect food to taste like. But this can lead to health issues not just confined to cardiac-related problems.

"High sodium intake is also linked to osteoporosis and other conditions, so there's a range of dangers people are unaware of," says Dr Daniel McCartney from the Irish Nutrition and Dietectics Institute and lecturer in human nutrition at DIT. Food labelling can be improved -- not all sandwiches or prepared foods show either sodium or salt content and this is more difficult if you buy your sandwich from a deli counter. "At the moment it's not mandatory to label salt content in food," says McCartney. "Consumers should have the benefit of clear labelling because then they can at least make an informed choice."

One thing very clear from our survey is that food sold in garages not only had some of the highest salt content, but it's often purchased by men who are spending the day in a car -- making them a key risk group for cardiac problems. "Research shows that the more educated and affluent people are, the more knowledgeable they are about healthy eating.

"So unfortunately there are sectors of society unaware of the dangers of salt in their diet and the damage it's causing," says Dr McCartney. Taxing convenience foods, like they do in Denmark, may be one way to drive people away from high-salt foods but it could be difficult to implement.

Dr McCartney has an alternative approach. "Subsidising healthy foods might be a better way to deal with this and would be certainly easier to implement. People could then displace foods that they might have planned to eat with something healthier and cheaper."
- Suzanne Campbell
Irish Independent

Read more: http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/independent-woman/health-fitness/smart-consumer-do-you-really-know-how-much-salt-is-in-your-lunchtime-sandwich-2425449.html#ixzz15eETEMlh

The Susan Boyles of the Sea finally have their moment

Did a report on RTE radio’s Countrywide programme last weekend on factory farming and the labelling of Irish and non-Irish food. It’s such a tricky area. Basically we all want to know our food is safe and that it’s produced under decent standards. And if we’re really interested in food, we also want to know where it’s coming from. Organic free range chicken sold at an Irish farmers market versus Chinese mega chicken unit with 50,000 birds. Which would you choose?

The problem is that Country of Origin labelling does not exist in the EU, although this may be soon about to change. In EU speak there is currently a “re-cast” of labelling laws taking place, which may bring in Country of Providence onto the label. This is a great development and means that we can get a bit more clarity as opposed to the present fog of imports and misnamed product. It's particularly relevant with chicken as four million chicken fillets are imported into this country every week, mainly from Thailand and Brazil. In fact at food service level in Ireland - which is restaurants, work canteens, sandwich bars and garages (don’t dare to pretend you don’t garage graze), imported chicken accounts for 95% of what is sold. Apparently we're mad for chicken, but we probably wouldn't be that mad about it if we knew where much of it is coming from.

It was good timing that we discussed food labelling on the programme as two days before, UCD released the shocking results of tests they did on fish sold in Ireland – showing that 25% of the fish they bought (from fish mongers, supermarkets and fish and chip shops) was not what it said on the label. Most of the chicanery here is going on with cod. It seems that currently in Ireland there is everything under the sun being passed off as cod. Things you never heard of; the Susan Boyles of the fish world – Pollack, Saithe, Greater Argentine – are finally having their moment. Pollack, okay that's not so bad, but Greater Argentine? Is that something to do with The Falklands? I spoke to Professor Alan Reilly from the Food Safety Authority of Ireland whose sorry task it is to investigate this matter. He reminded me that food adulteration, or in this case, food substitution is one of the oldest tricks in the book, it's been going on since we began to trade food, or to be more correct, trade rotten meat with the edges cut off to some poor sucker. The FSAI are going to have a lot of digging to do on this one so watch this space. The hilarious thing is, no one noticed that what they were eating wasn't cod. Doesn't say a lot for us consumers does it?