Horse meat
Posted: Sat Feb 09, 2013 1:50 pm
If you are of the " i trust nobody and all companies are evil" persuasion - I'll save you time - you may as well stop reading now.
I don't know if I should put this under the 'humour' section as this topic is just simply the gift that goes on giving!
For the record I work in the food sector but nothing to do with meat. I don't know what is worst or most funny about this – people’s reactions or authorities being exposed as terminally under resourced!
I got an 'alert bulletin update' from one of my fast tracking resources (normally pretty good) that headed 'authorities now suspect fraud’. Well feck me! - they have finally got Sherlock on the case and we can all sleep better knowing that there are not poor horses out there wandering into unattended mincers! <muppets>
Bottom line, ANY system can be bypassed by determined criminals. Certification has been forged or it may be in some cases not checked thoroughly enough. Traceability is a basic requirement for any food with additional requirements for meat. In fact, in Dec 2011 (with 3 year transition) the new Food information to consumers legislation was published. Among other things this extended the country of origin requirements for meat to include, birth, rear and slaughter.
The real scandal here and the thing not being reported as usual........ is that organised crime has become unmanageable and very sophisticated. To the point where this jobby is happening under peoples noses and there is not the will or resource to fix it. I'm still horrified that there are some member states that receive shedloads from the EU but do not sort out corruption and crime. Step forward Ireland, Poland and many other more eastern members. This type of crime is seen as huge profit, small potential consequence and we are directly funding it in many cases
I'm not turning this into an EU rant - I'm a healthy EU sceptic, not a head in the sand Euro-cynic (believe we have to be in it to negotiate as this is infinitely better than having zero voice - long story, also linked to experience in job, Swiss model a disaster for UK). I just wanted to put forward a different point of view that seems to be being lost among the stupid meaningless stories about X% horse in Y product.
I don't know if I should put this under the 'humour' section as this topic is just simply the gift that goes on giving!
For the record I work in the food sector but nothing to do with meat. I don't know what is worst or most funny about this – people’s reactions or authorities being exposed as terminally under resourced!
I got an 'alert bulletin update' from one of my fast tracking resources (normally pretty good) that headed 'authorities now suspect fraud’. Well feck me! - they have finally got Sherlock on the case and we can all sleep better knowing that there are not poor horses out there wandering into unattended mincers! <muppets>
Bottom line, ANY system can be bypassed by determined criminals. Certification has been forged or it may be in some cases not checked thoroughly enough. Traceability is a basic requirement for any food with additional requirements for meat. In fact, in Dec 2011 (with 3 year transition) the new Food information to consumers legislation was published. Among other things this extended the country of origin requirements for meat to include, birth, rear and slaughter.
The real scandal here and the thing not being reported as usual........ is that organised crime has become unmanageable and very sophisticated. To the point where this jobby is happening under peoples noses and there is not the will or resource to fix it. I'm still horrified that there are some member states that receive shedloads from the EU but do not sort out corruption and crime. Step forward Ireland, Poland and many other more eastern members. This type of crime is seen as huge profit, small potential consequence and we are directly funding it in many cases
I'm not turning this into an EU rant - I'm a healthy EU sceptic, not a head in the sand Euro-cynic (believe we have to be in it to negotiate as this is infinitely better than having zero voice - long story, also linked to experience in job, Swiss model a disaster for UK). I just wanted to put forward a different point of view that seems to be being lost among the stupid meaningless stories about X% horse in Y product.