Month: January 2013

Latest from EU Member States

Product from Polish plant to blame for horsemeat contaminationin in Ireland

January 30, 2013 ARC

The source of the horsemeat contamination of Irish hamburgers was finally pinpointed, with raw ingredients from Poland identified as the culprit. Irish Agriculture Minister Simon Coveney has ordered close scrutiny of the Silvercrest plant, where equine DNA was found in burgers, for six months. There were three more positive tests found in readings of 7 per cent, 3.6 per cent and 1.2 per cent in three individual burger samples taken this month. All thee burgers contained products sourced from a company in Poland which has been supplying raw materials to Silvercrest in the past year. Irish Department of Agriculture then carried out further tests on the actual raw material, which showed significant levels of equine DNA – 4.1 per cent. Late last night, the results of further tests came through. All were positive for equine DNA – with even higher results than the 4.1 per cent, the greatest being over 20 per cent. The same Polish food component was responsible for the 29.5 per cent reading of equine DNA contained in one Tesco burger tested […]

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Latest from EU Member States

Cameron’s EU stance undermines coalition outlook

January 28, 2013 ARC

The fallout from David Cameron’s à la carte EU membership speech is likely to divide the UK’s parliamentary voice in the crucial final round of CAP reform negotiations. The UK prime minister has done more than offend European political figures who might once, under other circumstances, have heard him out. He has effectively locked himself out of several processes at once and scored more than one own goal in domestic politics, into the bargain. This increases the opportunities to recruit MEP support for the crucial European Parliamentary vote on the CAP in March. As the head of a UK coalition government, Cameron has ridden roughshod over the Liberal Democrat (Lib Dem) parliamentarians who keep him in power. Deputy prime minister and Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg is both a former MEP and former European Commission civil servant: he also speaks Dutch, Spanish, French and German. Clegg was one of the first to criticise the prime minister’s bull-in-a-china-shop performance when one of Downing Street’s worst-kept secrets finally saw the light of day. He described Cameron’s notion […]