May 23, 2013

French minister call on the EU to introduce licenses for meat traders

The European Union  has been urged by French Minister to introduce specific licences for meat traders to prevent frauds, such as the horsemeat scandal that affected Europe in early 2013.

An investigation following the horsemeat scandal identified a French meat-processing company at the centre of the fraud, which involved traders and abattoirs from the Netherlands to Romania.

Speaking to meat industry representatives, French Food Minister Guillaume Garot said, "We need to supervise traders' activities better. Food is not a commodity like any other."

Unlike other commodity traders, meat traders are not registered to their country's financial authority and instead act as middlemen between a range of interests, from farms and processors to slaughterhouses.

France has asked the EU to help processed food makers in member states by including the origin of meat in labels. However, Consumer Affairs Minister, Benoit Hamon, said that an EU deal on labelling may not be resolved in the near future, as media attention is waning and consumers' confidence in cheap, low-quality food has improved.

Hamon continued to say that other EU countries, such as Britain, where horsemeat was first found in January, needs to commit more strongly to reach an EU deal.

Meanwhile, following an EU-wide testing campaign, France was found to have more cases of illegal horsemeat in beef products than any other EU member state - more than one in eight samples tested positive.