FSA Snags Chinese Chicken Shipped to Ireland

Just another reason to buy local, not global. Truth in Labeling?
Apparently not completely true in the EU or the UK. Sourcing meats,
fruit, vegetables and grains from local producers is still the safest
way to go....as many of the members of this group already know.

Unethical processors.....sadly, there are still some, actively using
any loophole possible to make a quid, as is obviously the case made
public, by the Guardian, today.

Burkie in Kansas
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/food/Story/0,2763,1653786,00.html

Poultry from China sparks search for illegal meat

Felicity Lawrence, consumer affairs correspondent
Wednesday November 30, 2005
The Guardian


The Food Standards Agency is trying to trace hundreds of tonnes of
poultry, beef and pork following the interception of an illegal
consignment of chicken shipped from China.
The discovery of the chicken led to raids on a meat wholesaler where
the authorities found evidence of other illegally relabelled meats. The
FSA is now trying to trace meat supplied from the same premises to
companies across the UK.

An alert has been issued to every local authority to check all meat
originating from Eurofreeze (Ireland) Ltd and to impound it if they are
suspicious about its labelling. Eurofreeze has had its licence to
operate suspended.


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The FSA was alerted on November 9 by the Northern Ireland authorities
that Eurofreeze was being investigated, following a tip-off about an
illegal shipment of poultry from China to Belfast port in August.
The EU currently bans the import of live birds and poultry meat from
China as a precautionary measure to prevent the spread of bird flu and
because residues of illegal antibiotics have been found in the past.
The authorities in Northern Ireland seized and destroyed the
consignment, having established from shipping documents that it was
destined for Eurofreeze, an FSA spokesman said.

When enforcement officers then raided Eurofreeze's premises near
Enniskillen, they found evidence that a number of fraudulent health
marks had been used there. Health marks are the official stamps used by
licensed meat factories to show the origin of meat and to prove that it
has passed health and safety inspections. They are easy to fake and in
this case, the FSA says that fake copies of health marks owned by
large, reputable companies in Ireland, Holland, Spain and Germany were
discovered.

The FSA said it did not yet know whether Eurofreeze had received
previous consignments from China.

"We can't rule it out but we don't know of any other shipments from
China. We do know that Eurofreeze sent out a huge amount of chicken.
Officers have looked at recent documentation - tracing the most recent
stuff is the key because we may still be able to retrieve it," the FSA
spokesman said.

Eurofreeze declined to comment yesterday and would not accept any
calls. The company's pet food operation on the same site has also had
its licence suspended, according to the FSA. The UK enforcement
authorities were asked on November 18 to start trying to trace tonnes
of meat that was sold on from Eurofreeze to other companies around the
UK.

The company is thought by the FSA to have been distributing legitimate
supplies alongside those illegally repackaged but local authority
environmental health officers are being asked to check all meat
originating from Eurofreeze and to impound it if they are suspicious
about its health marks.

The FSA declined to name any of the UK companies that bought from
Eurofreeze, but documents passed to the Guardian show that the list
sent to local authorities runs to several pages.

Enforcement officers who had seen it said that given the length of the
list, the type of companies on it and the sell-by dates of the meat
involved, they believed it likely that meat distributed by Eurofreeze
had entered mainstream manufacturing of ready meals and meat products,
as well as the chains of brokers which supply companies with meat. Some
of the companies on the list are known to environmental health officers
from previous inquiries into the recycling of pet food into the human
food chain.

The FSA spokesman said that it was not aware of any immediate health
problems with the meat but admitted that it had not tested any of
Eurofreeze's products yet. "Most of the meat there is still frozen,
there are thousands of boxes, so it presents huge logistical problems,"
he said.

It was concentrating its efforts on tracing where Eurofreeze's meat had
ended up, he added, and the next step if necessary might be recalling
products from retailers.

Alan Reilly, head of the Food Safety Authority of Ireland, which has
also been involved in following up the investigation, said that the
origin of the meat already sent out by Eurofreeze was not yet known.
"How long this has been going on will be the topic of investigation.
Some of it would probably have been consumed."

Environmental health officers have long worried that the number of
times meat is traded and the distance it travels to meet today's
manufacturing requirements leave the system open to abuse.

Gary McFarlane, director of the Chartered Institute of Environmental
Health in Northern Ireland, said: "The 'farm to fork' cycle now
typically involves multiple international borders, thousands of miles,
and numerous pairs of hands in the commercial sector. The movement of
food in this way, coupled with its clear capacity to act as a vehicle
for disease, means that the potential threat to public health has
increased."

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