§ Mrs. BallardTo ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (1) what plans he has to make spot checks on consignments of imported beef to ensure that SRM removal has been carried out to United Kingdom standards; [23598]
(2) how he intends to monitor the removal of SRMs from de-boned imported beef; [23599]
(3) if he will make a statement on the mechanisms by which the Government intend to enforce the restrictions on beef imports. [23597]
§ Mr. RookerThe Government's new unilateral controls to ensure that certain food and feed products do not contain and were not derived from specified risk material (SRM) require products to be certified as such in their country of origin by national veterinary services. Products produced before 1 January and products derived from animals born, reared and slaughtered in Australia or New Zealand, provided they are certified as such, are not subject to the SRM-freedom requirements. All consignments imported into the UK from third countries are checked at designated Border Inspection Posts. EU Single Market rules permit random spot-checks only at destination. Consistent with those rules, a daily sample of randomly selected consignments from EU member states are checked for conformity with the new unilateral controls.