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. 

Irish poultry firm closes, Nando's announce new openings, with chicken from Northern Ireland

News has emerged today that Cootehill Farms, also known as Co-Operative Poultry Products Ltd in Cavan is to close with the loss of 90 jobs. It comes at a time when chicken producers and processors are under incredible pressure to deal with the spiraling cost of animal feed which is making business for some, unsustainable.

The company had been trading in County Cavan, the centre of Irish poultry production since 1949. The 25 farmers who supply chicken to the plant have also now lost their source of income and will need to get contracts with other processors fast, or go under. I've written extensively about the Irish poultry sector on this blog and pointed out many times that unless we eat Irish chicken, we won't have an Irish poultry sector. Cheap imports particularly in food service are killing the Irish trade, also loose chicken on butcher and supermarket counters coming in from Eastern Europe or as far as Thailand, sometimes bed and breakfasting (often with some kind of bulking out processing) in the EU to attain an EU origin stamp.


On the same day we hear of the Cootehill Farms closure, Nandos, the global chicken giant (think Kentucky Fried Chicken with a zestier twist) announces it's opening two new restaurants in Blanchardstown and Liffey Valley shopping centres. These outlets will employ an additional 100 people and bring to seven their number of Irish restaurants. Nandos is a South African success story - originally set up in 1987 it has become a family-friendly dining-out giant, with 850 branches worldwide. And guess where they get their chicken from? Moy Park in Northern Ireland.

Moy Park are also a huge food success story but they are one of the reasons small producers in the Republic cannot compete. Their scale is enormous, they have 13 separate processing facilities in Northern Ireland, England, France and Holland. This year Moypark - owned by the Brazilian food giant Marfrig, posted annual sales of £1.07 billion. You can argue the 32 counties is still Ireland but it's not that simple. We gain none of the revenue in tax from this business nor a cent of the profits which go back to Brazil. Even Irish large-scale poultry businesses such as Vincent Carton's Manor Farm is finding it hard to compete with giants like Marfrig. With feed prices going ever upwards, the retail sector is also bearing the cost. But the view of Irish farmers and operators in the sector is that if consumers are prepared to pay for Irish chicken the present storm can be weathered out and we can still have a viable industry.

I talked to Dublin restaurateur Joe Macken (Crack Bird, Jo Burger, Skinflint) about this recently. He still buys chicken from the Republic for his string of eateries as he feels strongly that if we don't, we'll have no Irish chicken supply left and only ourselves to blame. He is also having to pay a lot more for his Irish chicken as the processors ask their customers to take the brunt of the hikes they're having to pay farmers to keep business sustainable. And what's the root of that? Drought in the US, Ukraine bans on wheat exports and spiraling costs in compound feed ingredients that are completely beyond Ireland's control.

So what's your view folks? Time to put our money where our mouth is or pay for it later?

See also - my extended piece on the issue last year in The Irish Times -

basketcase: Irish chicken, the end of the road?

Feeling unwell? Have some chicken soup - Jewish medicinal cooking at its best

The runny nose, the headaches, the shivers, the huge bill for useless products at the pharmacy... Manflu - we all get it from time to time. Despite not actually being a man I've suffered from three bouts of manflu this year and I've found many people reporting the same. Colds, coughs and flus seem to be increasing in number and severity.

What's the reason? It could be many things - an increase in warm, damp weather or higher levels of virus mutation and activity. What's not helping is the rise in antibiotic resistance of many bacterial infections.

There are moves in the EU to reduce antibiotics fed to animals which can only help the problem of bacterial infections and viruses in public health. What was thought to be good farming practice is increasingly viewed as something that has created giant health problems - generations of factory farmed animals have had antibiotics routinely included in their diets. This promotes organisms in their systems to become resistant to antibiotic treatment. And once those organisms spread from the animal population into the human population they can do real damage, such as the prevalence of MRSA in hospitals.

MRSA has been found on packaged meat in Europe. Other antibiotic resistant organisms that are now present in human health have been found to have originated in poultry populations in Holland and in pig farming in the US.

The FDA in the United States which is one of the world's slowest moving food bodies, is finally also examining antibiotics in the food chain. Farm and food groups are lobbying the FDA for change. It's greatly needed and consumer pressure can have huge influence so don't underestimate the power you hold in helping your own future health.

In terms of the common cold there are over 200 viruses around us that are actively causing colds and flus at the moment. And if you're anywhere near small children, you'll get all 200 of them, in the one year. Or so it seems in our house.

When I examined foods that might help stave away colds, I found good evidence of some that actually do work. Others, like vitamin C, have a reputation for curing or preventing colds that simply doesn't stand up. Particularly if you're spending money on vitamin C supplements, think again - the research sadly proves that it doesn't do much good for colds.

In Shelf Life in today's Irish Times I give a run down of the best food bets for beating colds and give ideas for rustling up some traditional chicken soup. It really does work, the ancient Greeks and Jewish medicinal cooks were on the money! Check it out and take hope - feeding yourself properly will boost your immune system and it's pretty easy to do. Nothing complicated, just simple sense x

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/health/2012/0501/1224315399589.html

Would you eat meat that was grown in a lab? Even if it solved world hunger?

Winston Churchill - bon vivant and lover of food, drink and the odd giant cigar, once offered a view of the future where meat would be grown not on a farm, but in a lab. Churchill wrote: "We shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing, by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium.''

While it sounds very Orwellian and proves that Churchill wasn't just handy at moving model armies around a giant map table - now, eighty years after his pronouncement, Churchill's predictions are coming to pass. Scientists are close to producing the world's first commercial meat grown in a lab. Mark Post of Maastricht University, one of the premier scientists in this field, claims he will produce the first "cultured meat" burger by the end of the year.The question is, would you eat it?

Most initial reaction will no doubt go along the lines of "Hell No!!!"

After all, lab grown meat is grown from stem cell technology, a science that makes a lot of people squirm as in the first place, let alone, suggest they eat the results. In order to grow "cultured" meat, stem cells are taken from pig or poultry muscle and then cultured with added nutrients to form a film of animal flesh. Think - chicken fillet, only thinner.

If you're at this point pretty repulsed by the idea, think of the following reasons for why lab-grown meat could be better for animals and also, better for people.

Growing meat, whether in factory farms or out in fields, is one of the major contributors to global environmental degradation, especially de-forestation and global warming. It uses up water resources and has contributed to huge loss of biodiversity. Currently our appetite for meat has meant that almost one-third of global land use is used for growing either meat, or cereals to feed meat animals - including cattle, pigs and poultry. You could argue (and plenty do) that our lust for meat, and the growing "middle class" appetite for meat in China and India is killing the planet.

And how does the alternative stand up? - research shows that cultured meat has 80-95% lower greenhouse gas emissions, 99% lower land use and 80-90% lower water use compared to conventionally produced meat in Europe. More importantly, even if the meat produced by factory farms (which certainly in the US and in some cases Europe, have proved to have dubious records for animal welfare) was replaced with cultured meat, it would take the horrors of large scale factory farming out of the food chain. If people don't want to look at video of where their chicken is produced well then they probably would be better off served by something grown in a lab.

But the real issue comes when you look at world hunger. Cereals are grown all over the world not for people to eat, but to go into animal feed. And this is the case even in developing countries where hunger and deprivation are serious issues. Cultured meat, (given that over time it would have to be produced at huge levels) would mean that less cereals leave the food system for animal feed and instead can be given to humans, yes - us, to eat.

So what about it? Would you eat it, even if you knew it was morally and ethically more correct?

Irish chicken, the end of the road?

Last week it was lambs.. now it's chicken. On Tuesday the Irish Times published the investigative piece I wrote on Irish chicken which has certainly excited some debate about what we're eating - debate being the polite word. I suppose strong reaction to any piece of journalism is what you want, and it's good to see that people are engaged with the issue and in some cases, simply frightened about what they're eating. I've had email comments sent on to me from the Times and a few strange phonecalls since the piece came out. One chap who called me this morning had a good old rant but I'm sure it's nothing a bucket of chicken at KFC can't sort out. After all, food and countryside issues often excite slightly over the top reactions. After directing an episode of Ear to the Ground (Ireland's farming programme) on fox hunting some years ago, I was delighted to find I was banned from the entire area of East Galway by the pro hunting lobby while at the same time an animal rights protestor chained himself to the gates of Leinster House. Have a look at the piece and see for yourself. http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/features/2011/0329/1224293291679.html I'm off to write my presentation for a food event "For Food's Sake" tonight at The Sugar Club in Dublin. Really looking forward to it - myself, a representative from Bord Bia and the IFA will be presenting ideas and then responding to audience discussion on the future of food and farming. And there'll be artisan foods to sample afterwards... better leave some room in the tummy, though there's not a lot of room in there with an eight month old baby taking up most of the space... Tally ho x

Black chicken for Halloween, anyone?

Yes it looks scary, but apparently black chicken meat is the next big thing. American chef Rick Moonen recently thrust black chicken into the spotlight after he made it into a mousse for his stint on Top Chef Masters (the US equivalent of Masterchef).

The black chicken he used is a Silkie hen - a variety of small hen which are prized for their fluffy feathers, large tassled Ugg-boot style feet and are much beloved of serious fowl fanciers who bring their beloved Silkies to shows up and down the country. I've often been told that Silkies are great layers and make lovely hens for home use, but I've never seen them on a plate before.

This particular Silkie has bones and flesh that are the shade of onyx; apparently it has a genetic combination that gives it it's unique colour, and it has a rich, gamey flavour to match.

It's a fantastic look for Halloween and I'd love to know if anyone in Ireland produces this Silkie for the pot, please let me know. Apparently the Chinese have for millenia eaten black chicken (which in China is called wu gu ji, or black-boned chicken). For them, putting the dark poultry into a stew or soup is a great remedy for curing colds, cramps, or a headache. This ties in with the Jewish tradition of using chicken soup to cure all sorts of sickness - apparently in the soup's droplets of fat lie unique qualities to boost immunity, so if someone tells you to eat chicken soup next time you're sick they may be on the right track.

So if chicken soup is a superfood, black chicken soup might even be better. Would love to get my hands on some of these black-fleshed Silkies, anyone with info, send it my way!

If the chicken on my plate comes from Thailand I don't want to eat it

Great to see this week that the EU Parliament has finally proposed country of origin labelling for meat, poultry, dairy products, fresh fruit and vegetables. This means that as we roam around the supermarket we will know if the food we're buying is coming from countries where production standards are far lower than the EU, let alone where scary animal welfare issues and large scale factory farming is the order of the day. I've been on these farms, and they're not pretty. The experience turned me into someone who is cross eyed from reading tiny print on the back of packaging and endlessly despairing of poor quality food being passed of as local or Irish. Within my food choices, I feel that having knowledge of how animals are farmed and killed also brings responsibility.

The most important thing about this proposal is that it encompasses meat, poultry and fish when used as an ingredient in processed food. This is great news and obviously going to be a major headache for the makers of pizzas, chicken nuggets and the like. To say the least, they are not in favour of country of origin labelling - it has obvious cost issues but more importantly, their chicken kievs made in China might become suddenly less attractive than chicken kievs made in Monaghon. My cynical husband pointed out that while it's hard for the giant food processors to lobby every single member of the EU parliament, the Council of Ministers is another matter, and this proposal has to go to them before it's adopted. Let the lobbying begin. If the EU wants to preserve a culture where people live on the land and producing food they need to vote it through.
Lets hope good sense prevails, watch this space.

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?