Speaking after today's European Parliament vote on controlling fraud in the food chain, GUE/NGL MEP Martina Anderson welcomed new proposed control measures but said the fight must continue for consumers to be able to have full confidence in the food supply.

“Transparency and a fundamental shift away from promoting lowest-common-denominator agribusiness productivism must be the key elements of food safety policy. The horrifying case of the horsemeat scandal revealed the incredible extent of food fraud throughout Europe. Consumers have a right to know where their meat is coming from and should be able to purchase food for their families safe in the knowledge that what they are buying is in fact what it says on the label. Long and complex food chains require greater traceability to help avoid such scandals in the future,” Anderson said.

Portuguese MEP João Ferreira said: “In recent years, successive cases of fraud in the food chain have exposed the failure of control systems. From horse meat marketed as beef to dioxin contamination, from the entry into the food chain of products derived from cloned animals to regular products advertised as organic, the scandals are copious.”

“Basic principles of public health protection, consumer rights, and food safety are clearly not being upheld and this failure is inseparable from the increasing deregulation of agricultural policies and the consequent rise of models of intensive production which favour large agribusiness and annihilates small and medium farming. We cannot just talk of regulation and control. The scandals will continue, as long as these policies and production models are not profoundly altered.”

GUE/NGL Press:
David Lundy +32 470 85 05 09
Gay Kavanagh +32 473 84 23 20
Emily Macintosh +32 470 85 05 08