STRICT PASSPORT SYSTEM ‘IS OPEN TO ABUSE’

UNDER strict regulations introduced in 2009, all horses must be identified by a passport and microchip.

Horses presented at meat plants for slaughter are required to have ‘clean’ passports, indicating that they have not been treated with substances that are potentially harmful to human consumers.

These include antibiotics and phenylbutazone or ‘bute’, a painkiller often administered to horses, but which has been found to cause cancer in humans.

An inspector from the Department of Agriculture, Food and Marine is present at every plant when horses are presented for slaughter. Passports are inspected and microchips scanned to ensure they match and the animals are fit for slaughter. But microchip-writing kits are now freely available for purchase, enabling users to program counterfeit microchips with a Universal Equine Life Number to match the passport of a different horse.

This allows dealers to pass off horses unfit for human consumption as ‘clean’ and sell them to meat factories where they enter the food chain.

Clean passports can be sold for up to €500. In 2013, the Department of Agriculture was forced to notify the EU of a possible breach after 25 animals in Co. Offaly were found to have false identities.

The department described the discovery as ‘deeply disturbing’ and opposition politicians condemned the system as ‘riddled with holes… totally open to abuse and not fit for purpose’.