It is 10 years since the horsemeat scandal rocked the Irish and European meat industries.

The discovery of horsemeat in supposed beef burgers sent shockwaves through the beef sector right across the EU, and left the reputations of regulatory authorities – including the Department of Agriculture and Bord Bia – severely battered.

Ironically, the shenanigans of January 2013 were foreseen six decades earlier by the then Minister for Agriculture, Tom Walsh. Walsh strongly resisted calls from animal rights activists in the early 1950s for an embargo on the live export of horses to the Continent.

Groups such as Our Dumb Friends’ League argued that shipping 25,000 horses a year for slaughter in Belgium and France was cruel and called for the development of horse slaughter plants in Ireland.

However, Walsh refused to grant licences for any such factories, maintaining that the development of horse slaughter plants raised the risk of food fraud by creating a situation where horsemeat could be passed off as beef.

Were this to happen, he contended, it would threaten Ireland’s standing as an “exporter of high quality beef and mutton”.

Clearly, politicians in the 1950s had crystal balls.