So 47 farms used contaminated pig feed. Unless the FSAI confirms that Gubbeen or Caherbeg are two of those farms, I’ll be having a lovely bacon sarnie for my breakfast.
If the State’s Chief Medical Officer says that dioxin is only dangerous if a person is exposed to it over a long period of time, then why the hell are we destroying millions of Euro worth of food?
We all eat chicken that spends its life sitting in its own faeces in the dark and lots of the pork we eat is dosed up to the eyeballs in sub-therapeutic antibiotics, so how is a slight possibility of a touch of PCB going to make our health any worse?
Related to this, I’ve met with a few small food producers recently and I don’t know how they stay in business with the nonsensical levels of paperwork and measurement that they have to deal with. Is this actually part of the problem? An unbelievably bloated bureaucracy unable to measure and react quickly because they are drowning in irrelevant form processing? A bit like Sarbanes-Oxley in the US causing people to be so obsessed with process, they forgot about the intent and allowed the banks to trade recklessly for years.
Finally, I thought we had full meat traceability from field (or concrete pen) to fork? Why not just release the tracking codes of all the individual batches we need to destroy? Or are we all a bit too thick to manage that?
This Sunday’s rasher sandwich brought to you by the letter P and the Caherbeg Television Workshop:
December 7, 2008 at 11:26 am
Go for it with your rashers Conor
The reason why everyone is sensitive around PCB’s is that they are persistent – they accumulate in flesh and never degrade. However what I learned about them was a long time ago in Wales and beyond that you will have to Google them.
keith
December 7, 2008 at 11:27 am
Was going to write the same blog post about my rasher sandwich today but you bet me to it! Looks lovely BTW
December 7, 2008 at 11:46 am
PCBs are nasty buggers so it leads me to suspect this may be a much bigger and more long term problem than they are admitting. A tiny chance of eating a tiny amount of PCBs over a three month period doesn’t look like enough reason to react as they are. Conspiracy theory bloggers, don’t you just hate us
December 7, 2008 at 11:47 am
Wondering if that’s a football in the Gubbeen picture above? If it is, that’s so awesome.
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December 7, 2008 at 2:18 pm
Good point!
I’m confused by the wording of the release as well. We have statements like:
“Contaminated feed was used at a total of 47 farms.”
“Nine of these were pork producing farms”
OK, I’m with you so far.
“The remaining 38 were beef farms, with one of those also producing pork products”
So out of 47 farms, 38 were beef-only? If so, given that there are so many more beef farms involved than pork, why isn’t beef being banned, and not pork?
Either way, this recall seems a little OTT, but maybe it’s not being reported correctly (by the authorities, I mean, not the media).
December 7, 2008 at 6:00 pm
Trouble is that they really don’t know what they have, apparently. The number of pig farmers using the contaminated food is increasing as the Vets and FSAI dig into records.
It is very much OTT and I have serious misgivings about how it has been handled to date.
December 7, 2008 at 6:06 pm
Just saw headline in UK Times. Basically one Irish mill has been taking stale bread and dumping it into the crumb processor without removing the plastic packaging. This is the source of the PCBs. So it’s pretty damned clear that all organic pork can be excluded from this panicked knee-jerk response.
December 7, 2008 at 6:13 pm
Ah just saw your tweet saying that the plastic bag thing has been discounted. Contaminated syrup? Weird.
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December 8, 2008 at 10:11 am
Had a rather tasty ham on Saturday done Christmas style coz we didn’t hear a thing about the frenzy all day. We finished it off in sandwiches yesterday. Seems to me like the FSA are panicking to save face after getting a media roasting over the bottled water scare a few months ago & seeing as pork is such a huge export, we have to be seen to be taking this super seriously. Enjoy le rashers, save us some?!
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December 8, 2008 at 1:48 pm
I’m thinking the same, I got carried away with the hysteria and dumped a GIANT ham this morning. I’m considering rescuing it from the wheelie bin, but I’d imagine that would, actually, kill me.
December 8, 2008 at 8:37 pm
Seems to me that they ought to clear those farms that aren’t contaminated, and clear those processors that haven’t been using contaminated meat tout sweet. I can’t imagine how stressfull it would be to have your hard work destroyed when you can prove its safe.
Especially during a recession, and particularly in the lead up to christmas.
Tragic
December 12, 2008 at 6:02 am
It’s tough getting totally healthy food today so when my local butcher says she hasn’t changed a thing in how she sources her product, I continue buying it. Sure, some rogue ingredient may occasionally flow into the food chain but I also know the diesel that washes down the front of my home every fortnight is also getting into my water, and I’m drinking that day after day.
I don’t want to burden the Irish taxpayer by living past the age of 80 so I’ll keep rashers in my fridge until my daughter finishes college.
December 12, 2008 at 8:23 am
Still waiting for the bungling incompetents who are responsible for this farce to resign. Maybe they could learn something from the ex-head of FÁS.
December 12, 2008 at 8:46 am
I seem to recall that a couple of years ago they executed the head of Food Safety in China for covering up various potential health hazards.
We can assume that the government and their advisors here wished to avoid a similar fate!
The Precautionary Principle!
As Dr. Patrick Wall has said, “Damned if they did, damned if they didn’t!”
Still our bacon is back and better than ever for it’s extra 4 day maturation!
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