Since the start of the year, the issue of food labelling and traceability has come into the spotlight for various reasons.

There has been heightened concern on the issue in recent weeks due to a number of developments that are not strictly related to each other, but that all touch on food origin and tracing in their own ways.

These developments included the adoption of the EU-Mercosur Trade Agreement; the controversy surrounding Bord Bia chair Larry Murrin and his sourcing of Brazilian beef for his food business; and the importation into Ireland of a quantity of beef that contained a growth hormone that is banned in the EU.

It is not surprising then that the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture and Food decided to devote a whole meeting to the topic yesterday (Wednesday, February 12) - one of two meetings the committee had yesterday.

The meeting heard from representatives of the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Bord Bia, and the Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI).

During the committee meeting, Fianna Fáil senator Paul Daly asked whether imported food that is tested at an Irish border control post - Dublin Airport, Dublin Port, Rosslare Europort or Shannon Airport - is allowed to progress along the supply chain to the retailer, and finally the consumer, before those test results come back.

He was speaking in the context of the consignment of beef from Brazil that contained the banned hormone, asking what the procedure would be in cases where there was a suspicion that a consignment of meat contained banned substances.

"In the instance where you do the laboratory [test]...if you had a whistleblower or...you were tipped off, and you decide to take a sample, send it to a laboratory, but then the containers go on and that food is consumed before the result comes back from the laboratory, then if the result comes back positive, you've, knowingly almost, let contaminated food into the food chain," Daly said.

However, one of the representatives from the FSAI at the committee said there were two scenarios at play: one in which the meat would be allowed to continue to market while waiting for laboratory tests to come back; and another scenario in which the meat would be stopped at the border control post.

Dr. Micheál O'Mahony, the FSAI's chief specialist for veterinary public health, explained: "Where you have a suspicion, the answer is no; that can't go on.

"If you have suspicion [on] reasonable grounds; then you'll take a sample and hold the consignment, so that's one scenario," he said.

The other scenario, Dr. O'Mahony outlined, concerns mandatory baseline testing where no specific suspicion has been raised.

"There's a whole other scenario of baseline sampling, where [EU] member states are obliged to have baseline sampling, called a monitoring plan, on the way in," he said.

This sampling can be targeted at food consignments on the basis of risk, but where the risk doesn't rise to the level of reasonable suspicion over a particular consignment.

Dr. O'Mahony said: "For meat consignments, it would be 7% that have to be sampled as a matter of course, where you target towards where you might suspect; [but] where it wouldn't be suspicion, it would be a lower order of risk-based sampling; it's not suspicion.

"In those instances, EU law explicitly allows the product to keep on going before the lab result comes back," he explained.