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Meat: Slaughterhouse Hygiene

4.31 p.m.

Lord Lucas: My Lords, with the leave of the House, I shall repeat a Statement being made in another place by my right honourable friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. The Statement is as follows:

"With permission, I shall make a Statement about the standards of hygiene in British abattoirs. As my right honourable friend the Prime Minister told this House yesterday, this is an issue which the Government take very seriously indeed. I welcome the opportunity to set out the facts.

"Before going into detail, I wish to emphasise that before any redmeat carcass goes into the food chain it has to be individually stamped by Meat Hygiene Service inspectors as fit for human consumption: this is a critical safeguard, the existence of which is being ignored in the welter of comment appearing over the past few days.

"Until 1995, standards and rules in abattoirs were enforced, with varying rigour, by over 300 local authorities. This was not a satisfactory state of affairs. For this reason we set up the Meat Hygiene Service, a major reform which was strongly opposed by the Labour Party and others.

"The Meat Hygiene Service has now been in operation for two years. In its first year, the Meat Hygiene Service was required to carry out a review

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of all slaughterhouses in Great Britain to record standards, to establish a baseline for measuring future progress and to decide how to allocate resources for enforcement. This is the exercise to which I referred in my Statement last week.

"In order to raise standards within abattoirs, the Meat Hygiene Service was set formal targets. In the first year, it was set a target of increasing by 10 points the scores of those plants which were below 65 on a scale of 0 to 100. This target was met in full. For 1996-97, it was required to ensure that at least two-thirds of the plants exceeded 65. It seems likely that this target will be met also. Although these scores are a useful mechanism for driving up standards, I should again emphasise that all redmeat must be passed fit for human consumption.

"In addition, the Meat Hygiene Service has taken a number of further steps. Thus, we have drawn up an operations manual which for the first time sets out a national standard on hygiene and in the hands of Meat Hygiene Service inspectors is a vital tool for raising such standards. It specifically covers the steps to be taken so as to exclude 'dirty livestock'--a policy which, as I said last week, we will shortly be reinforcing in graphic form.

"Also, since concern has been expressed that supervision in some plants may be inadequate, the Meat Hygiene Service has carried out a major review of supervision levels. As a result, the contracts now being placed with official veterinary surgeons will ensure that sufficient time is put in at each plant in 1997-98.

"Further, the State Veterinary Service, which oversees the Meat Hygiene Service, has carried out an audit of the service's methods in its application of both the operations manual and the scoring system. I will shortly be discussing with those responsible for the audit how best to carry forward their recommendations.

"I should also mention the steps we have taken over the past year to strengthen the capacity of the Meat Hygiene Service. More than 450 additional staff have been assigned to the agency. Although these extra staff were appointed to apply BSE-related rules, they will of course reinforce inspection overall in abattoirs. Enforcement of the BSE rules themselves was tightened up sharply and, as the House has been informed on past occasions, compliance with the rules in that specific area is now satisfactory.

"What I have just described is action already taken. I will now deal with action in hand. We have been working with the Meat Hygiene Service on a joint action plan to drive standards upwards, targeting both the most serious problems and the plants with particular difficulties. The main specific action points, which my honourable friend the Parliamentary Secretary put to a meeting of leading meat industry representatives on 18th February, are as follows.

"First, the Meat Hygiene Service will accelerate its work on defining standards for clean livestock. Standards already defined in the agency's operations manual will be set out in the graphic document to

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which I have already referred. Secondly, it must be clearly understood that no carcass showing any signs of faecal contamination should be submitted for approval as fit for human consumption. Thirdly, we shall shortly start the publication of the findings of enforcement activity on a regular basis. Fourthly, principal official veterinary surgeons, who are the most experienced veterinary surgeons, will be given a larger role in managing OVSs and meat inspectors. Fifthly, Meat Hygiene Service's staff will be given extra (additional) training in hygiene standards. Sixthly, OVS attendance will be stepped up at plants with poor hygiene scores. Seventhly, a new industry government working group will be set up to concert the drive to higher standards. Eighthly, the State Veterinary Service will intensify its audit activity, which will provide the basis for yet further action.

"I have told the chief executive that in appropriate cases infringement of the rules should result in prosecution. Also, where appropriate, consideration will be given to the revocation of licences.

"The knowledge which the Meat Hygiene Service has now of meat hygiene is clearly relevant to Professor Pennington's inquiry into E.coli. It is important that the Pennington Group should have access to this knowledge. Professor Pennington has been offered a statement to be drawn up by the chief executive of the Meat Hygiene Service.

"I am well aware that public concern over meat hygiene has been heightened by the reports of the past few days. In my view, those reports are misleading and do not take account of the important progress made over the past 18 months. I do not pretend that there is not scope for further improvement. But I can assure the House that MAFF, the other agriculture departments and the Meat Hygiene Service had been and remain determined to drive up standards, and we are succeeding.

"I turn now to the pieces of paper produced by the Opposition in recent days from various quarters and of various dates. They may yet produce more such documents. I will not speculate as to the motives behind their production. However, they must be seen in the context of our policy to improve standards. Set in that context, they do not detract at all from the facts, which are as I have just stated them to be.

"The Meat Hygiene Service will apply the rules ever more strictly and this requirement will be reflected in the Meat Hygiene Service targets for 1997-98. Each plant now knows where its weak points are. Plants which are found repeatedly to have low standards will face progressively stricter attention from the meat inspectors and, as I have said, in appropriate cases prosecutions and licence revocations will ensue. Our purpose is to bring our abattoir practice up to the highest possible standards.

"There is much public interest in this matter. My right honourable friend the Prime Minister told the House yesterday that he was taking a personal interest in our efforts to drive up standards. I therefore intend to place a fuller version of this Statement, containing

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additional detail about the measures to which I have referred, as an information paper in the Library of the House. I hope to do this by the end of this week. This will provide the basis for more informed discussion than that which has taken place over the past few days".

My Lords, that concludes the Statement.

4.40 p.m.

Lord Carter: My Lords, the House will be grateful to the Minister for repeating the Statement made by his right honourable friend the Minister of Agriculture in another place. Perhaps I may turn to the Statement first. As regards the disciplinary action which has been mentioned against employees of the Meat Hygiene Service, the details of which were given in a Written Answer by the noble Lord in the Official Report of this House last week, can the Minister say whether all those cases related to offences connected with the specified bovine materials or were they other offences that were subject to disciplinary action?

The noble Lord outlined the eight point plan that the Government have now put in action. However, it is a quite extraordinary situation. An independent report in March 1993 showed that there were very poor standards in our slaughterhouses. The Government introduced the MHS in 1995 to deal with that but now they tell us, as if they had just discovered it, that,

"it must be clearly understood that no carcass showing any signs of faecal contamination should be submitted for approval as fit for human consumption".

Why now in March 1997, when an independent report was produced in March 1993, is it necessary to draw that to the attention of the slaughterhouse operators? The Statement says that,

"we shall shortly start the publication of the findings of enforcement activity on a regular basis".

But again, why now? We have had the BSE enforcement bulletin since last summer, so why do the Government have to wait until they are pressed to produce this description of enforcement activity?

There is also the extraordinary sentence in the Statement which says that,

"pieces of paper produced by the Opposition ... do not detract at all from the facts which are as I have just stated them to be".

What do those pieces of paper say? They refer to levels of hygiene enforcement leaving much to be desired; abattoir inspectors being actively encouraged to ignore breaches of regulations; the fact that, far from improving, standards of hygiene are steadily decreasing; a potential time-bomb for human health; meat being sold falsely as BSE free in as many as one in 10 cases; not enough health staff to combat the problem; and allegations that the Minister, Mr. Hogg, has failed even to answer the letters dealing with the matter since June of last year. However, all that is just brushed aside and described as,

"pieces of paper produced by the Opposition".

The EHOs formerly employed in meat inspection were transferred and became civil servants in the employment of the Meat Hygiene Service when it was set up in April 1995. They then had to sign the Official

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Secrets Act. I believe that there was a mindset among those officials who spend every day of their working lives in abattoirs. They know that their activities could lead to the closing of abattoirs and the staff losing their jobs. As we all know, the abattoir trade is fast and rough. They are very aggressive businessmen working on very slim margins. As I said, I believe that there was a mindset in the MHS and that the Government did nothing to ensure the enforcement of the regulations which they had laid down. I have that as first-hand information from employees of the MHS.

In December 1995 in this House my noble friend Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos, asked the noble Lord, Lord Lucas the following question:

"can the noble Lord tell the House how many slaughterhouses in England, Scotland and Wales are regarded by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food as inefficient or unsatisfactory?"

The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, replied:

"I do not believe that we know of any such slaughterhouses".

In a later supplementary question I put the following point to the Minister, asking him whether it was,

"extraordinary after all the confusion and the increased costs and pressure on abattoirs resulting from the regulations, [that] the recent inspections of abattoirs by the State Veterinary Service found that nearly half of those inspected were in breach of the rules governing the removal of specified offals as a control against the possible spread of BSE".

In his reply, the Minister said:

"our belief is that the introduction of the Meat Hygiene Service and the regulations has resulted in a great increase in quality and a great decrease in costs compared with previous inspection results".--[Official Report, 13/12/95; col. 1273.]

In April 1996 the Shadow Health Minister, Mr. Henry McLeish, pointed out that the latest available figures for England showed that 112 slaughterhouses were failing to comply with the EC directive.

I have already referred to the independent study of March 1993 which highlighted the very poor standards in many of our abattoirs. Only seven months after that report the Government announced that,

"the seven point plan of deregulation in the meat industry ... signals a move for a less prescriptive system of meat hygiene enforcement".

Unannounced inspections by the State Veterinary Service in the autumn of 1995 showed that 48 per cent. of slaughterhouses were failing to meet the Government's specified bovine offal regulations. In that same news release from the Labour Party of April 1996, we asked the Government to publish:

"the latest figures for hygiene assessment in slaughterhouses in England, Wales and Scotland; the most up to date figures for those slaughterhouses that have satisfied the EC Directive; the names of those slaughterhouses that are failing to meet hygiene standards so that the public can see where food safety regulations are being broken".

All of that was ignored. When did the Government know about the bad practices in abattoirs; what did they know; and what action did they take?

Another report and independent review came to light last week. Perhaps I may just remind your Lordships of one part of its contents, namely:

"Spinal cords were not removed, specified bovine offal bins were unmarked and there was a major problem with faecal contamination".

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That report was not publicised, although the authors had been advised that it would be. We know that Professor Pennington, who is leading the Government's inquiry into E. coli, did not receive a copy. Indeed, the Minister, Mr. Hogg, said on a radio programme today that it was Professor Pennington's fault if he had not seen it. However, if he did not know that such a report was being prepared, how could he ask for a copy of it? At the very time when the Government should have been leaving no stone unturned to ensure that standards were properly applied in our abattoirs, we understand that the Minister himself had not looked at the report. That comprehensive and devastating report was summarised, sanitized and made available to a few people in the meat industry.

Last Thursday in the other place the Minister of Agriculture said that we were not to worry because he had made sure that everything was all right in our abattoirs; while he had not actually seen the report of the hygiene advice team, he had in fact put its recommendations into effect. The Minister said that standards in our abattoirs "were constantly improving". However, now we find that the Association of Meat Inspectors has been warning Ministers and others over the past nine months that, in its experience, the problems in our abattoirs are bad and getting worse. In a letter to Mrs. Angela Browning on 11th February, the General Secretary of the AMI said:

"There has been no improvement in the standards of hygiene, and sadly faecal contamination appears to (be) becoming an acceptable infringement of regulations".

On 19th January he wrote to the Chief Executive of the MHS saying that,

"far from improving, standards of hygiene are steadily decreasing--with particular reference to faecal contamination in beef".

Indeed, only last week, the General Secretary told the chief executive that,

"far from being encouraged to enforce stricter hygiene standards, MHIs are being actively encouraged to ignore breaches of regulations and in some cases [are] threatened if they try to take action".

In the Statement the Minister referred to the State Veterinary Service and reminded us of its crucial work in overseeing the MHS. When this Government came to power in 1979, there were just under 600 state vets, but now we have fewer than 300. It is over a year since the problem of dirty livestock was highlighted by the report of the hygiene advice team. Is it not obvious from what the Minister said there are serious problems still to be addressed in our abattoirs?

I have worked professionally for the Ministry of Agriculture for over 40 years. With great sadness, I have to say that this is a sad Statement for a once-great department of state. Indeed, today's Statement will not convince anyone that the Government have, as yet, even begun to grasp the enormity of the problem.

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