Horsemeat: EU Action Plan to tackle fraudulent food practices

Tonio Borg, Commissioner for Health and Consumer Policy, has proposed a 5-point Action Plan to address the shortcomings identified in Europe’s food supply chain. The Action Plan is a response to the recent horsemeat affair first identified by the Irish food inspectors who had found horsemeat in foods marketed as frozen «beef burgers» in a number of UK supermarkets.

The Plan includes the following actions to be implemented by 2014:

1. Develop synergies between enforcement authorities, ensure rapid exchange of information on intentional violations of food chain rules, promote the involvement of Europol in investigations;
2. Ensure that rules on horse passports are enforced correctly, that passports are delivered only by competent authorities and that national databases are created;
3. Require that financial penalties for intentional violations of food chain rules be established at sufficiently dissuasive levels, and that control plans in the Member States include unannounced controls;
4. Adopt rules on mandatory origin labelling of meat (sheep, goat, pig, poultry, horse, rabbit, etc.) and deliver a report in autumn 2013 on the possible extension of mandatory origin labelling to all types of meat used as ingredient in foods;
5. Present & assess the results of the controls currently carried out in the EU countries.

The controls were proposed by Commissioner Borg, and endorsed by the EU countries, in February. They are carried out to detect the presence of undeclared horsemeat in foods marketed as containing beef, as well as possible residues of phenylbutazone in
horsemeat. Phenylbutazone is an anti-inflammatory drug for the short term treatment of pain and fever in animals.

The European Commission will assess the results of these controls by the 15th of April. The first results show no evidence of any food safety concern, but point towards deceptive practices in several EU countries.