The head of the Food Safety Authority of Ireland, Dr Patrick Wall, yesterday called for the complete labelling of all food in Ireland to stop Irish consumers being misled.
He told the first ever Irish Poultry and Egg Conference in Athlone that he hoped the Labelling Group set up recently would bring forward substantial recommendations and that there would be the political will to implement them.
"The labelling regulations only apply to pre-packed product. Chicken pieces in freezers, fillets on trays in supermarkets and chicken in the catering trade and contained in product, do not have to be labelled," he said.
Dr Wall said Irish producers had nothing to fear and everything to gain from labelling.
Imported chicken was as safe as locally produced chicken but it lacked the freshness and taste, he said. "People buying food should not have to worry they are being ripped-off," he said.
Opening the conference, the Minister for Agriculture and Food, Mr Walsh, said producers here were coming under increasing presssure from imports from South America and Asia which had lower production costs.
He said the World Trade Organisation was likely to further dismantle import barriers and the sector would be increasingly challenged to maintain market share.
Mr John B Keane, Bord Bia's quality assurance manager, said Irish poultry imports had grown from 18,000 tonnes in 1997 to 45,000 tonnes last year.
The economic boom over the last seven years, he said, had coincided with a huge increase in chicken consumption but this had not brought any great dividends to producers or processors here.
"We know that a huge amount of this imported chicken is going to the food service industry where traceability and labelling requirements are less demanding and where consumers seem to display a blind spot with regard to quality concerns that are so important to them at the retail counter," he said.
Bord Bia's chief executive, Mr Michael Duffy, predicted that Irish poultry production was expected to increase by around 1 per cent this year and consumption was set to increase by the same amount.
He said that while exports from South American and Thailand had increased in recent years and had put pressure on price levels, imports would increase but at a lower pace than previous years.