According to Director of Audit and Compliance at the Food Safety Authority of Ireland, Peter Whelan, Keelaghan Wholesale Meats “opened the imported packages, removed the labelling and relabelled the product as Irish”. It is unknown how long Keelaghan Wholesale Meats had been engaging in such practices, but it suspected to be going on for quite some time, he said.
The recent investigation marked the first case of its kind brought by the FSAI against a company for re-labelling imported beef as Irish.
The conviction will concern farmers who contend that beef traceability controls after slaughter are not as intense as controls before slaughter. Peter Whelan believes that while processing plants are legally obliged to have traceability in their plants, responsibility in monitoring this lies with the factory themselves. “Plants are obliged to have traceability measures in place, but there is no strict legal requirement within a plant for this,” he said.
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The FSAI has been widely praised for their yearlong investigation into this case, which has brought this issue to the surface.
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According to Director of Audit and Compliance at the Food Safety Authority of Ireland, Peter Whelan, Keelaghan Wholesale Meats “opened the imported packages, removed the labelling and relabelled the product as Irish”. It is unknown how long Keelaghan Wholesale Meats had been engaging in such practices, but it suspected to be going on for quite some time, he said.
The recent investigation marked the first case of its kind brought by the FSAI against a company for re-labelling imported beef as Irish.
The conviction will concern farmers who contend that beef traceability controls after slaughter are not as intense as controls before slaughter. Peter Whelan believes that while processing plants are legally obliged to have traceability in their plants, responsibility in monitoring this lies with the factory themselves. “Plants are obliged to have traceability measures in place, but there is no strict legal requirement within a plant for this,” he said.
The FSAI has been widely praised for their yearlong investigation into this case, which has brought this issue to the surface.
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