Parliamentary battle over horse meat scandal
Paterson, MP for North Shropshire, was criticised first by Creagh, Labour MP for Wakefield, for not realising the serious nature of the crisis soon enough.
“On Friday [February 8], No. 10 told the press that the secretary of state was working hard at his desk, getting a grip on this crisis. But, in fact, he had to be called back to London from his long weekend – crisis, what crisis? Until Saturday’s panic summit, he had not actually met the food industry to address this crisis. The food minister had met with the food industry just once, exactly a week ago.”
Creagh also attacked Paterson over the small scale of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affair’s processed meats testing regime, announced last week and the lengthy timescales involved before results would be available.
About 28 local councils are to buy and test eight products each, with results due by April.
Creagh asked: “Does he think that surveying just 224 products from across the country matches the scale of this scandal, when he has asked the supermarkets to test thousands of their products by Friday?”
Schools and hospitals
Later in the debate, Paterson was questioned why guidance had only just gone out to schools and hospitals on handling the horse meat crisis?
Steve McCabe, Labour MP for Birmingham, Selly Oak, asked:"Even allowing for the secretary of state’s rather laid-back approach, does he not think it might have been smarter to advise that guidance be issued to schools and hospitals a little earlier than 10 o’clock last night?”
Paterson responded that he was “as active as I think he will find is necessary on this issue, having been at it for many, many days now”.
Unless the Food Standards Agency recommended that a product be withdrawn, the public, school children, prisoners and those in hospitals should have faith in the product, he added.
More rigorous policing
But Paterson conceded that food chain was extraordinary complex and needed more rigorous policing.
“I think that we could make a massive improvement within the current constraints of European competence and all the other arrangements, but I think that random testing would make a real difference.”
Paterson said: “I am trying to get away from the expression ‘food chain’. It is an extraordinary network – an amazing kaleidoscopic variety of factories and suppliers all working together. It is a real network, and what is quite clear in this case is that there has to be more rigorous and more random testing.
“I have faith in the advice of the independent Food Standards Agency, but down the road … I would like to see more random testing.”
In addition to agriculture ministers’ crisis talks in Brussels today, the scandal will be discussed at the Agriculture Council meeting on February 25.
