The appointment of a "supremo" to tackle the BSE crisis is being sought by the Labour Party in a plan to restore consumer confidence in beef. Such a key figure was essential to ending the Government's "scatter-gun" approach to it, it claimed yesterday.
Dr Mary Upton, the party's spokeswoman on food safety and consumer affairs, said the Department of Agriculture could no longer take responsibility for food safety.
"It is no longer tenable that the Department of Agriculture, which supports the farming industry, has the sole responsibility for all food safety matters behind the farm gate," she said.
The Food Safety Authority of Ireland should have responsibility for all food safety matters from farm to fork. Extra resources should be made available to it to carry out random inspections on farms to ensure feeding practices were compliant with legislation.
"Until there is a separation of food safety from the Department of Agriculture, the consumer will lack confidence in the inspection process." The new "supremo", she said, would have to be completely independent and would work with the Departments of Agriculture, Health and the Environment to protect public health and rebuild the damaged beef industry. The appointee would have overall responsibility for day-today decisions on controls and measures to reduce the risks associated with BSE.
The party also proposed an indefinite ban on the feeding of meat-and-bone meal to livestock; the labelling of meat by the country of origin, a £10 million promotion project for Irish beef, reform of the EU destruction scheme and a better compensation system for farms where BSE had been identified.
It also called for better targeting of BSE in "blackspot" areas where incidence of the disease is highest.
Meanwhile, the French Agriculture minister, Mr Jean Glavany, announced emergency measures yesterday to take 10,000 cattle a week off France's flooded beef market. This coincided with farmers stepping up protests demanding compensation for the effects of the BSE crisis.
Cattle are to be slaughtered and frozen, eventually at a rate of 10,000 a week, with priority on young cattle intended originally for the Italian market which has collapsed in recent months, he said.
France's main farming union has demanded that farmers be paid compensation for each head of cattle sold to cover them for their losses during the crisis. Their demands have been backed by a week-long series of protests across the country. On Wednesday, farmers entered an abattoir in the Rhone valley and burned a large quantity of Argentinian beef on the premises.