Pig Gate

No problem, I'll ask a butcher friend of mine. The Pork that ends up in the branded pork hasn't exactly had the healthiest diet.
 
No def not, if you have an animal feed/farm suppliers place locally you may find someone that way as small producers will go there to buy pignuts & other feeds etc the owners usually get to know the local smallholders & what animals they keep, def worth a shot!
 
This is an extract from an article in today's Irish Times:

The IFA (Irish Farmers' Association) says all fresh pork is... fully traceable, but the problem arises with other processed products such as sausages and pudding. These could be tracked back to their batches, but because meat from a number of different herds can be used in their production, the evidential sequence cannot necessarily lead all the way back to individual farms.
"In sausages and pudding, so many pieces of so many pigs are co-mingled, there's no way of tracing that back," Mr Lynch remarks. "You could trace it back to the day of manufacture but you couldn't trace it back to the individual farmer."
Of course all of this invites an obvious question about Saturdays recall decision. Why did the authorities not simply withdraw processed or untraceable products while leaving the higher-value fresh pork on the shelves here and abroad? The answer, it appears, lies with that nebulous if vital notion: consumer confidence.
To have left any products on the shelves with talk of dioxins and contamination circulating could have done fatal damage to the industry.
And to have issued a recall order for a selective list of some but not all products could have sown crippling confusion.
"I think the decision on Saturday was taken mainly in the interest of consumer confidence - to reassure consumers," said Mr Walshe.
Click to expand...

It seems the approach taken has done the exact opposite of what was hoped.

Regarding the traceability of processed products, once the source of contamination was narrowed down to the feed mill it was possible to trace it in the opposite direction. The mill's customers were identifiable and the animals delivered by them to meat processors were traceable. At that point the individual production lots in which meat from these animals might have been used could have been identified and products not involved could have been given the all clear.

By choosing a blanket approach and banishing all Irish pork from the shelves the authorities seem to be making an implicit statement that they don't have faith in their tracing and tracking procedures.
 
It's starting to look like there really is nothing more to this. In Haughey's day this would have been kept nice and quiet and a few bods in the FSAI would get a couple of Charvet shirts and a small extension to the side of their houses. Instead it's going to cost the taxpayer at least €180 million for the product recall alone plus the damage it will do to the industry which could be a multiple of that.
 
Back
Top