The Fine Gael Spokesman on Food, Andrew Doyle, has accused the Minister for Agriculture, Brendan Smith, of paying at least €23m of hard-earned taxpayers' money to pork processors for imported pork despite the requirement that the payments be for Irish-farmed pigs.
Following last night's publication of a report into the dioxin crisis 13 months ago, Deputy Doyle said over 50,000 pigs were slaughtered after 1 September 2008, which was 8% of the national kill in eight abattoirs.
He said the Minister for Agriculture paid €69m to pig meat processors who are unable or unwilling to distinguish between the Irish-produced product and approximately one third of production which is from imported pork.
That amounts, he said, to a potential waste of €23m of much needed funds.
Deputy Doyle called on the Minister to insist that information on country of origin be on every label and that no more grant aid be given to any food producer who does not have this basic piece of information clearly and accurately displayed.
Earlier, the Irish Farmers' Association said the recommendation on food labelling in the report does not go far enough.
The report from a review group chaired by UCD's Dr Patrick Wall was issued by the Department of Agriculture last night.
It shows that the taxpayer has already paid out over €100m to the pork industry following the total recall of product after the contamination.
IFA President John Bryan said the recommendation only requires that labelling is as informative and accurate as possible. But he said that full country-of-origin labelling, backed up by legislation, is needed.
Mr Bryan said farmers are very disappointed that this was not recommended in the report and he said they would expose any secondary processor or retailer that persists in misleading consumers by mislabelling of products.
The Labour Spokesman on Agriculture & Food, Deputy Sean Sherlock, criticised the manner in which the report late yesterday afternoon.
Mr Sherlock said the timing was cynical in the extreme and it denied members of the public and opposition spokespersons an opportunity to scrutinise it properly.
He said the report was 'spun' by Minister Smth yesterday to present the owner of plant as the person most culpable but, he said, closer reading of the report shows that there were serious issues around department's role in the scandal.
