DEAR SIR:

Some years ago, a very wealthy US lady, Leona Helmsley, famously claimed that taxes were just for the “little people”. I think big corporations still think that. However, I am wondering if the same thing applies to food traceability? Is traceability just for the little people and does it end at the processors’ front door?

Farmers jump through all sorts of hoops so that the consumer can have confidence in the food we produce. We were supposed to get a bonus for this “quality-assured produce”, but, in reality, many cattle don’t qualify for all sorts of spurious reasons.

Instead it is used as a means of penalising farmers whose cattle don’t fit into very tight specs. It has been hijacked by processors and retailers to increase sales without giving any rewards to producers.

The Two Sisters chicken scandal shows that traceability means very little once you go beyond the farm gate. We have produce being returned, repackaged and re-stamped before being sold to someone else. It is hard to think that this happened by mistake. We can think back a couple of years to “burger-gate”. Farmers didn’t somehow breed a new hybrid species, part cow and part horse. Someone decided that horsemeat was cheap, let’s make a few extra euros. Was anyone closed down? I don’t think so.

Then we have my pet hate. This is where some marketing wizard makes up names to make things sound Irish or English depending on your target market. You then have consumers who want to buy home-produced food being duped.

Very many consumers want to support home-grown produce, they want to cut down on food miles but they are being fooled. They say competition is the spice of life, but our competition authority is doing its best to wipe out all competition by allowing more and more takeovers and mergers. It should be called the Anti-Competition Authority. So I think we should really look at the labels and not just the name and support local butchers and producers.