Hard
to ignore this now
Government
'ignored' horsemeat warning
Government
ministers were warned in 2011 that horsemeat was illegally entering
the human food chain, it was claimed.
ITN,
17
February, 2013
John
Young, a former manager at the Meat Hygiene Service, now part of the
Food Standards Agency (FSA), told the Sunday Times he helped draft a
letter to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
(Defra) in April that year.
He
told the paper the letter to former minister Sir Jim Paice on behalf
of Britain's largest horse meat exporter, High Peak Meat Exports,
which warned that flesh with possible drug residue getting into food
could blow up into a scandal, was ignored.
In
the letter the company warned the Government that its passport scheme
designed to stop meat containing the anti-inflammatory drug
phenylbutazone, known as bute, getting into the food chain was not
working, calling it a "debacle".
"Defra
gave nearly 80 organisations the authority to produce passports and
some of them are little better than children could produce... It's a
complete mess," he said.
Sir
Jim said he did not remember seeing the warnings, telling the Sunday
Times: "If this information was in Defra and was not being acted
upon, it warrants further investigation.
"I
would like to know why on earth I was not being told about it."
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