Sad as it is, we have decided to head home to Australia in a couple of weeks. We’ve delayed it for as long as possible because WE LOVE IRELAND. But realistically, we need to get home and work out what we’re going to do for the rest of our lives.
Staying in Ireland was going to be fraught with complications and hurdles, not least being that the Irish economy is a toilet right now. A combination of factors, including questionable management of the Celtic Tiger, has brought Ireland to the point where use of the ‘R’ word (recession) is now being phased out and the ‘D’ word is creeping in. Hundreds of people are losing their jobs every week, the dole queues are growing and no one seems to know when this ‘bust’ part of the boom-bust cycle will end.
So this is not a good time to be looking for work. And certainly not a good time to be trying to earn enough to save a few Euros and enjoy the poxy Australian dollar exchange rate in reverse. Several large employers are dramatically downsizing (Dell Computers recently announced that it would cut 1,900 jobs at its manufacturing plant in Limerick, moving some of the positions to Poland) and the banking sector is in turmoil. In just one day Allied Irish Bank’s share price fell 58 per cent, Bank of Ireland plummeted almost 55 per cent, and Irish Life Permanent closed down 50 per cent. After reporting a profit of over €1 billion in July 2007, AIB’s total value dropped to just €528 million this week, €122 million of which the bank had in secret loans to its recently departed Chairman.
To compound the economic downturn, the Irish food industry received a battering in the form of a dioxin scare that forced a recall just before Christmas of all pork products dating from September to December.
Contaminated animal feed supplied by one Irish manufacturer to just nine pig farms had caused the contamination of pork with between 80 and 200 times the EU’s recommended limit for dioxins and PCBs. Now, one would imagine that with only nine affected pig farms, the recall would not be a big deal. But, as the FSAI (Food Safety Authority Ireland) pointed out at the time:
It is estimated that approximately 10% of pigmeat from the Republic of Ireland is affected by the current contamination with dioxins. However, as all Irish pigs are slaughtered and processed in a small number of processing plants, it has not been possible to distinguish between potentially contaminated and non-contaminated product. Therefore, as a precautionary measure all pork products originating from the Irish Republic have been recalled.
In addition to the tonnes of bacon and sausages (and more ham pizzas than you could poke a stick at…), thousands of pre-ordered Christmas hams were withdrawn and many were destroyed. Not only were customers seriously inconvenienced, retailers had to produce refunds at a time when most were experiencing lower-than-usual pre-Christmas takings, and compensation from suppliers was uncertain.
The consequences were initially projected to be catastrophic. The pork industry is the fourth biggest in Ireland's agriculture sector, worth around €400 million (A$795 million) per year to the Irish economy. The country's farms produce over 3 million pigs per annum, almost 50% of which are consumed within the Republic. The remainder is exported, mainly to Northern Ireland and Britain but also to Western European countries and as far afield as China.
Within two days of the recall announcement 1,800 jobs were lost with a further 6,000 jobs said to be at risk, although my guess is that this alarming figure was over-estimated. Processors halted the slaughtering of pigs until the Irish government promised them financial reparation, the details of which are still being finalised. 100,000 pigs were condemned for slaughter (most of which are still on death row, creating a consequent problem of animal welfare) and the estimated costs of the crisis initially stood at €100 million (A$200 million).
Within a few weeks, however, some of the withdrawn pork products were put back on the market – once the producers could provide substantiated evidence that their raw material came from pigs that were not fed on the contaminated feed. This process in itself presented challenges in relation to adequate storage while producers waited for the all clear. It also raised questions about traceability, and highlighted how vulnerable organic, local and artisanal food is to being dragged into the vortex of consequences of factory farming. According to FSAI:
All food and animal feed businesses are required to establish and implement food traceability systems which are compliant with current legislation. It is a legal requirement to have a system or set of procedures that allows food businesses to trace one step forward and one step back. This means that food businesses know who supplied them and where their product has gone. However, there is no legal requirement for food businesses to have traceability systems which can trace raw materials through the factory and into finished product (i.e. Process Traceability). So it is not a legal requirement for pork factories to be able to identify exactly which pork carcass from a particular farm went into each batch of finished pork product.
Pig slaughter plants in Ireland comply with these legal traceability requirements under the supervision of DAFF (Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food). However, given the nature of the slaughter and cutting process it is unlikely that these processors would have been able to introduce additional traceability systems to those required by law. Therefore, most pork processors cannot identify exactly which farm produced the pigs that resulted in the pork cuts distributed from the factory. This necessitated a complete recall.
The cause of the contamination is still being debated. The current official line is that a machine fault caused fumes from lubricating oils laden with PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) to come into contact with the pig feed. There is some conjecture – perhaps politically motivated – that this PCB-laden lubricant came from fuel oil smuggled across the border:
The Irish Republic's environmental protection agency and Irish police are investigating the possibility that the feed was tainted with dioxins from smuggled fuel oil.
The fuel is converted from agricultural green diesel to red diesel used in motor vehicles and for heating oil. This process, pioneered by the IRA's south Armagh Brigade during the Troubles, produces dioxins as a waste byproduct.
Police are acting on intelligence that the oil used to heat the animal feed in a processing plant in the republic was sourced from Co Tyrone in Northern Ireland and may have been smuggled fuel. However, they are also exploring an alternative theory that the oil was legitimately sourced but was tainted by being transported in a tanker contaminated with dioxins. (Henry McDonald and James Meikle, The Guardian, Thursday 11 December 2008)
Another possibly more worrying cause is also being scrutinized: that rejects from pizza production plants were being put into the pig food production process with their plastic wrapper still in tact.
…more likely is that non-feed grade oil is being used at some point in the cycle to dry biscuit meal (out of date biscuits and bakery goods from the food industry). Such non-feed oils obviously do not have the same quality controls as extra virgin olive oil and so could very easily have higher than food-safe levels of contaminants, including PCBs and dioxins. This suggestion hints once again, as did the ongoing melamine scandal, at how easy it seems to be for unscrupulous sectors of the food industry to use non-food materials in their products, allegedly. (David Bradley, Sciencebase, 07Dec08).
At 200 times the safe limit for PCB consumption, most consumers would reasonably avoid food with a high risk of contamination. Dormant fear, which is so easily whipped by the media into panic, is rarely mediated with common sense and comprehensible facts. A rasher or two of bacon with a small amount of PCB is not overly harmful. It’s the accumulation of dioxins that is the concern and one would have to eat several kilograms of the stuff over a short period of time (less than a week) for it to have any noticeable effect.
The paradox is what we as a society determine to be ‘safe’ and what we don’t. I wonder how many people carefully disposed of their ‘toxic’ bacon, ham and sausages into containers destined for landfill, then sat back and celebrated their responsible actions with a cup of tea and a cigarette.
According to Graham Harvey, writing in The Guardian a couple of days after the recall was announced, the pork scare had a wearying familiarity about it.
First, there's the shock announcement that the suspect foods have been cleared from supermarket shelves. Then, the usual experts get paraded before the media with a reassuring message about the risks being very small – a message Michael Meacher is right to question.
Food safety agencies are called in to carry out urgent investigations, implying that such events won't be allowed to happen again. News gatherers ratchet up the drama with grim stories of the effects of whatever the particular poison happens to be. Farmers and food processors step in to calm the hysteria with claims that the fuss is being overdone and a little bit of contaminant isn't going to do you much harm.
During the current dioxin scare I've even seen a Lib Dem press release calling for better labelling, particularly for ready meals. The suggestion is that contamination is all to do with foreign foods, and if we could only be sure our pork pies or microwave-ready toad-in-the-hole were made from good British ingredients, we'd be safe.
It's nonsense, of course. When it comes to safety, what matters is not where a food is produced, but how. And with our present large-scale, centralised, industrial production systems, food scares are inevitable.
I've a farmer friend who regularly raises a few pigs on her mixed farm. Her chosen breed is Berkshires, once famed for the quality of their pork. They spend their lives rootling around in pasture paddocks and feeding on a ration based on home-grown barley.
In due course, they're trucked off to the nearest abattoir for slaughter. The butchered meat is then returned to my friend's farm for sale to friends and locals. It's inconceivable that meat like this could be contaminated by dioxins or any other industrial poison.
If the unimaginable happened and a freak storm should dust the pasture with dioxins or PCBs from heaven knows where, even then the consequences would be limited. The contamination would be localised and contained.
Our industrial food systems, however, make intermittent catastrophes almost inevitable. Pigs are all too often crowded together in sheds and fed rations formulated from any number of globally-traded industrial grains and food by-products.
As I write, speculation has it that the current incident was caused by contamination of animal food with non food-grade oil such as diesel fuel, or with plastic food wrappings. Whatever the cause, once meat has become contaminated the highly-centralised nature of our food system makes wide-scale poisoning far more likely. Contaminated meat can quickly find its way into products that may be sold in a number of countries. Tracing contamination becomes a nightmare; avoiding such foods virtually impossible.
In their bid to reduce the risk, food safety agencies rely on hazard analysis to identify those parts of the process where contamination is most likely. But so extended is the global food chain that nasty surprises are inevitable from time to time. It's also inevitable that those of us who live on industrial foods will get an occasional dose of pollutant.
If you're not happy with the risk-analysis route to healthy eating, the best advice I have found is to make sure your pigs – and cattle and sheep for that matter – are raised on grass. And don't be put off by the fact that you live in town. I know a West Country pig farmer who makes a good living by supplying pigs direct to city folk.
He raises them – on pasture, of course – feeds them on a home-grown ration, has them slaughtered, then delivers the meat to the owner. Having paid up front, the owner gets a photo of his or her animal and is free to visit them on the farm if they wish. It looks to me like a fairly foolproof way of getting worry-free pork, or pretty well any other animal food come to that.
It doesn't even have to be expensive. Buying direct from the farm, consumers can often get this sort of meat at the price they'd pay in supermarkets for the hazard-assessed version. Whatever else its failings, industrial agriculture was supposed at least to deliver cheap food. Unfortunately, it doesn't even do that – especially when the cost of food scares is factored in.
I couldn’t agree more. I wonder if Australia will take heed of the Irish experience and foster small-scale food production and more direct producer-consumer marketing initiatives. I’d be joyful if all tiers of government started using the ‘F’ word – food – in relation to policy formulation, strategic development and, more importantly, action. Why is it that food is not on the discussion table? Why can we identify and prioritise other primary needs like shelter, clean air and water without mentioning access to nourishing food?
Michael Pollan’s open letter to President-elect Obama (“Farmer in Chief”) urged him to include in his restructuring of the new America liberation of critical issues such as food security, food quality, nutrition and soil management from the clutch of corporate commodity interests. Good luck. I hope Australia doesn’t wait – as per usual – for the US to lead the way or prescribe what policies its western partners ought to adopt.
It’s frightening that we must expect to see in our backyard sometime soon a food crisis on the scale of the one still reverberating around this little island. Perhaps the silver lining will be that mainstream consumers will come to demand viable alternatives to factory-farmed food instead of judging them to be luxuries of the elite and wealthy.
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