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THE DEPARTMENT OF Agriculture has suspended all operations at a county Offaly abattoir after an inspection found 25 “irregularities” relating to horse passports and microchips.
Minister Simon Coveney said he was concerned by the results of the investigation at Ossory Meats, adding that the findings were “totally unacceptable” and “deeply disturbing”.
On 8 March, officials from the department carried out identification checks on horses presented for slaughter at the Banagher plant, which had featured in BBC Northern Ireland’s recent Spotlight documentary into the illegal horsemeat trade.
A total of 25 horses were found to have irregularities in their passports or microchip identifiers. In some cases, while the microchip in the equine matched the passport, the marking on the horse and the passports were “very different”.
In other cases, horses were much older than they were presented as. These animals have all been humanely slaughtered and destroyed.
An investigation into the practices at the abattoir has already begun, Coveney confirmed. It will examine the roles played by the implicated Passport Issuing Agencies, the veterinarians whose signatures appear on the documentation, the registered owners and the traders who supplied the animals. The conduct and management oversight at Ossory Meats will also be probed.
The report into the wider horsemeat scandal, published by government today, described the incident as “quite extraordinary”, particularly given the “brazenness in attempting to have these animals slaughtered at a time when controls had been enhanced in the plant in question and also when the entire horsemeat saga was receiving such intense public scrutiny”.
The department said the “full rigours of the law will be deployed” where illegality is identified.
Until recently, the company had been subject to official controls provided by veterinary staff at Offaly County Council but powers were transferred to the department as the equine mislabelling investigation progressed.
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Look everybody, this was known months and months ago. The animal welfare organisations brought this to the relevant departments attention and they were ignored.
Fields full of starving horses disappearing over night and no one asks questions?
The best thing that came out of this whole thing is that maybe the animal welfare organisations will be listened to in future……remember, they were not aware of the horse burger issue, just that horses were being mistreated and not a finger lifted by any official.
Poor horses..
” Deeply disturbing, totally unacceptable.” So minister Coveney is upset. FRAUD, FALSE LABELLING,
FAKE MICROCHIPS AND PASSPORTS, POOR CRUELLY TREATED HORSES, POSSIBLE MEAT NOT FIT FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION and the best our minister can come up with is this hogwash of a comment ! RESIGN YOU WASTER and take your useless Investigation Unit with you.
I would go further and say the meat was unfit for consumption.
Why would a horse ever apply for a passport if they know the only use they’re going to get from it is a one-way ticket to an overseas abattoir? Are they stupid?
” the company had been subject to official controls provided by veterinary staff at Offaly County Council”
Time for some sackings, I think, or is that forbidden by Croke Park?
All operations suspended till after Cheltenham.
Jaysus! First horse meat in burgers..now operations in abbatoirs! I know the HSE is struggling but this is ridiculous!! :p
That’s only the half of it… Food for human consumption is being carried and delivered into restaurants, hotels and bars all over the country…. from vehicles collecting waste.
People of Offaly really lumbered with paragons of virtue from horse meat to Brian Cowan.
Wonder if BBCs Spotlight from a few weeks ago had anything do with this for anyone who missed it there were undercover footage of terrible abuse of horses glad they are getting there comeuppance and hope the feel the full force of the law.
We should have known before it was exposed on BBC maybe if RTE got out of bed with the government once in a while and done some investigation they discover real news doesn’t come from political PR
Jesus poor auld Offaly never gets a break .
Poor us
Lol BIRRgurs
Minus the offal
I hope everybody out there is taking note. They’ll work through every protein group once beef and horsemeat is addressed. I imagine sheep will be next and then poultry. Pork will probably be last in the main protein groups because they’ll have the problem of ‘where do the sausage skins come from?’ to deal with.
So that’s where me poor old nag Norris ended up
I like burgers
Ireland really does deserve to be the international laughing stock we have become.
2000 (!) Ghost Estates, the boomiest property boom in history, single-handedly guaranteeing the European Banking System, Horse Burgers, License to Drink & Drive, eVoting machines, 100m spent on a city centre incinerator project that hasn’t even started and we don’t have enough waste to burn in but have to pay the incinerator if we don’t incinerate enough, ponzi Insurance Companies, Bottleworks sale price, Sean Dunne, Sean Quinn, Sean Fitzpatrick. We didn’t start the fire, it was always burnin, but the world kept turning.
I’m going to have tears running down my face this Paddy’s Day at the embarrassment we have become.
Let’s try eclipse all the humiliating stories about Ireland and drink like we’ve never drank before. Trying to pretend we are anything but a bunch of drunk leprechauns just backfires.
It was known about ages ago, Dispatches did a special on it on Channel 4http://www.channel4.com/programmes/dispatches/4od#3484719
So hungry I could eat a horse…
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