It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Osborne, at this late hour on a Thursday afternoon. I should begin by declaring an interest. I am still involved in a farming business that produces red meat: beef and lamb. I commend the Chairman of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Miss McIntosh), and the members of the Committee for the work that they have done on this very important matter. I also commend the NAO report that has recently been published.
The sound and fury has gone out of this matter for now, but that does not mean that it is not extraordinarily important. It is extraordinarily important for our farming communities that their product should not be contaminated again in the future and extraordinarily important for consumers that they should have the ability to choose what they want to eat, knowing that it is as described on the label. Sadly, however, the history of food is full of examples of contamination and adulteration. The watering down of beer is a heinous crime, but it has been perpetrated everywhere. It is not the only one, unfortunately.
I would like to draw a distinction between contamination and adulteration. As far as I am concerned, contamination is when a small quantity of extraneous material finds its ways into foodstuffs. That usually occurs because of negligence or carelessness in the preparation or processing of food, in relation either to buildings or to equipment. Sometimes contamination may not be serious. It may involve inert material. But sometimes, of course, it can be very serious indeed. One example is the poisonous material ergot in rye bread; I can think of other examples. It is also very serious when infective material gets into foodstuffs. Sadly, there are outbreaks of E. coli from time to time in this country. Of course, the Chairman of the Select Committee mentioned the presence of pork in food that is supposed to have been processed to an halal standard, which is grossly offensive to the Muslim community. That is particularly serious as well.
I define contamination as something that does not take place deliberately, but it quickly became apparent to me during the so-called horsemeat scandal that what was happening was not happening through carelessness. In the main, it was a deliberate attempt to make money out of fraud, and we should see it in that light. People from time to time do see the opportunity to do that. If they can introduce something into a foodstuff that does not necessarily alter its appearance, taste or consistency, they can get away with it for a short time before more sophisticated tests can be done on that foodstuff. The Chairman of the Committee mentioned the changes in the way in which certain foodstuffs, including meat, could be included in other foodstuffs.
Adulteration also occurs when we have high commodity prices for meat or for any foodstuff, and of course the price of meat has risen quite considerably. If it rises quickly, there are opportunities for the less scrupulous
to introduce a cheaper product into what is a fairly expensive product. My criticism of the supermarket and meat processors still stands: rather than accepting that the price of the commodity had gone up, they were scouring the European markets and probably the world markets to find a cheaper product. That gave an opportunity for less scrupulous people to get involved and make money.