§ Mr. YeoTo ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will make a statement on the recent discovery of contaminated shipments of German beef in Northern Ireland. [147859]
§ Ms StuartI am advised on questions of food safety by the Food Standards Agency (FSA). The shipments of German beef in question were found to include a small number of beef forequarters to which pieces of spinal cord remained attached. Under the European Union-wide rules on specified risk material (SRM), the spinal cord should have been removed from the carcases at the abattoir at which the animals were slaughtered.
The presence of SRM on imported meat is clearly unacceptable. I have raised the issue personally with the Federal German Minister of Consumer Protection, Food and Agriculture on several occasions to stress the importance of effective implementation of the SRM rules and to press for remedial action at the abattoirs concerned. The FSA has also raised the matter with the European Commissioner for Health and Consumer Protection, who also expressed his concern to the German authorities. I am satisfied that the German authorities fully recognise the importance of effective SRM controls and are taking appropriate steps when breaches of these controls are discovered.