Pork mix up debated in Netherlands Parliament
The Dutch Parliament is about to debate a recent pork mix up, in which conventional pork was labelled ‘organically produced’.
The request to debate comes after the Netherlands’ largest meatpacker Vion Food admitted last week that in summer 2012 this had happened to 11,000 kg of ham.
Vion announced the mix up, making a public apology and saying procedures have been changed to avoid repetition. The pork was sold through retailers.
The incident occurred at the Encebe Vleeswaren slaughterhouse, part of Vion. A Vion spokesman said that a ‘human mistake’ caused the meat to be labelled wrongly. He added that there had not been any financial motive to do so, as the meatpacker receives sufficient amounts of organically produced meat to meet public demand.
Vion also said that there is no relation either to a televised documentary on Dutch television, earlier this year, ‘breaking’ the news that the meatpacker would sell conventional pork as high welfare labelled pork.
At the time, Vion denied the allegations and an enquiry did not reveal any problems either.
A local television channel reported that the person responsible for the meat production mid-2012 within Encebe has already been laid off – for completely different reasons.
The issue is sensitive as the meat chain has suffered some public image blows recently. The horse meat scandal in Europe, in the early months of 2013, raised question marks as to the transparency and credibility of the origin of meat.
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