Illegal meat imports: Government is playing Russian roulette with people's lives
It is an all too familiar story; one that seems to plague almost every public service in this country and this time it comes quite literally from the horse’s mouth.
Chairman of the Environment Food and Rural Affairs select committee Alistair Carmichael has said in a deeply concerning report published today that, at our borders, when it comes to monitoring, policing and preventing the illegal import of foreign meat there is ‘insufficient leadership, resources and intelligence to do so.’
The good, law-abiding, tax-paying people of this country are almost war-weary with the verdict that appears to lurk around the corner of everything from policing to education to local amenities and services.
Against that backdrop, that a lack of leadership, resources and intelligence is allowing fetid, infected meat into the food chain in this country is, sadly, unsurprising, but the potential consequences could not be more serious.
Mr Carmichael adds in his report that: “It would not be an exaggeration to say that Britain is sleepwalking through its biggest food safety crisis since the horse meat scandal.” That was more than a decade ago, a calamitous saga that revealed how vulnerable retail supply chains were to corruption, and as a result the human food chain.
As well as the risk to human health, deadly disease is so easily carried by poorly stored and illegally transported carcasses: the single outbreak of foot and mouth disease in Germany this year cost the German economy E1bn.
Quite frankly, we have heard too many times that we can’t so we won’t do this, that and the other – enough is enough: on this matter, the Government had better change the narrative and solve the problem because people’s lives are at stake.