Mayo TD Paul Lawless has told the Agriculture Committee that food labelling \u201cabuse\u201d is happening on the shelves of Irish supermarkets, with products advertised as \u201csupporting Irish farmers\u201d not actually sourced here.<\/p>\n
The Aont\u00fa TD produced a number of supermarket products that were advertised as being \u201cIrish\u201d however on inspection, the products\u2019 origins came from some countries outside the EU.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to bring you through some of the products that are on the shelves at the moment in Ireland. Broccoli from Tesco [with] no reference code [\u2026] the origin is from Ireland and Spain,\u201d Lawless told the committee as he held up the Tesco-branded product.<\/p>\n
He went on to show the committee items from SuperValu and Aldi, as he hit out at mislabelling that is going unnoticed in many cases by busy shoppers who don\u2019t have the time to scrutinise their groceries. Products listed by Lawless included \u2018Chef\u2019 branded tomato ketchup and SuperValu branded vegetables.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The TD said that Scottish carrots sold by the retailer had been labelled Irish: \u201cSecond item, carrots \u2013 Origin Scotland [but] on the packaging on the shelf it says \u2018Supervalu Irish Carrot\u2019. The next item \u2013 the advertisement says \u2018Bold Irish Flavour\u2019 but it says \u2018ingredients from the EU and outside the EU.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cNext one \u2013 we have a picture of Aldi with a big Irish flag saying, \u2018Proudly supporting Irish farmers,\u2019 and none of the produce underneath that particular flag is Irish.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018IRISH HERBS GROWN IN KENYA\u2019<\/p>\n
Next, Lawless pointed to Supervalu Spanish celery being labelled as Irish, and herbs grown in Kenya.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn the shelf, we have \u2018Supervalu Irish Celery,\u2019\u201d he pointed out. \u201cWe have honey here, and I\u2019m a beekeeper myself. I know how difficult it is to produce honey. The honey is about \u20ac3, and it says \u2018a blend of EU and non EU honeys.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the most egregious one is just off the shelves \u2013 it\u2019s a Supervalu Irish herbs thai-style curry. Proudly pictured [on the packaging] is an Irish farmer from North Dublin, Mr Flynn, with a lovely smile on his face. And you look at the origin \u2013 and it says Kenya and Spain. And this is just a very quick scan of what\u2019s happening today,\u201d said Lawless.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy time is very short, but there is a litany of food labelling abuse. Let\u2019s call it what it is. This question is for all of you \u2013 how is this happening? And what sanctions are in place for these retailers? What is the level of inspection? What is the level of penalties that are happening, because it is totally unfair to allow mislabelling to happen for busy consumers who don\u2019t have time to scrutinise labelling on one hand.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd then on the other hand, there are irish farmers who are basically subject to really tight regulation, who are doing things by the book \u2013 by Bord Bia standard in some cases. By Irish regulation and Department regulation standards in other cases, and then you bring in a product; you essentially allow it to be mislabelled, and that product would never satisfy any Irish regulation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Responding to the charges, Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI) chief executive Greg Dempsey and his colleagues pointed out the existing legal framework and a programme of checks.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn 2025 we undertook over 7,000 checks in respect of labelling in retail,\u201d Dempsey told the committee.<\/p>\n
Lawless, whose clip from the committee shot to virality on social media this week, said that he was disappointed that senior officials could not clearly explain how the situation is happening, what checks exist, or what penalties apply. He said instead of clear answers, promises are made to \u201clook into it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
He has credited presenter and author Mick Kelly for helping to bring the information into the public domain. Mr Kelly is the founder of GIY, a social enterprise that supports people to grow their own food, which started in Ireland back in 2008. <\/p>\n
According to Kelly, there will be virtually zero Irish vegetables in supermarkets here in five years time, with the farmer pointing to a huge reduction in field-scale vegetable growers in Ireland. He says that the Irish vegetable sector is collapsing, partly due to aggressive price promotions on vegetables.<\/p>\n
Kelly has also pointed to popular Irish-branded organic honey which has the EU leaf logo for organics, yet the product\u2019s country of origin is listed as Mexico.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI understand the need for a small business to make money and hit certain price points, and there\u2019s nothing illegal here but I think it\u2019s really important that consumers know what they are getting, and to understand that in order to get real honey with all the benefits, you need to be buying from a local beekeeper. Preferably one who keeps native Irish honeybees,\u201d he said this week.<\/p>\n
SCHOOL MEALS: CHICKEN ORIGIN \u2018USUALLY BRAZIL\u2019<\/p>\n
It comes after Aont\u00fa leader Peadar T\u00f3ib\u00edn called for a full audit of the hot schools programme to identify where products are sourced from. The Meath West TD said last week that he had been made aware that some suppliers of hot school meals have confirmed to parents that some products contain ingredients that originate outside of Ireland.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome parents around the country and some schools have been contacting their suppliers to query the origin of the food being supplied to schools under the hot school meals programme,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn some instances companies have replied to say that all meat is from Irish companies but further clarify that the chicken origin is usually Brazil\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe very least the government could do \u2013 the bare minimum \u2013 is to ensure that in instances where taxpayers\u2019 money is being spent on food, that food is Irish\u201d.<\/p>\n
He added that his party has asked the Minister for Education to carry out an audit of the food supplied to schools under the programme, saying that parents need transparency.<\/p>\n
That same issue has been highlighted by another popular food and nutrition influencer, Sophie Morris. Ms Morris, who has over half a million followers on the platform instagram, has hit out at the publicly funded government programme.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe food is being supplied by profit-driven companies, using misleading or even outright deceptive marketing,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis should not be a free market private business model. This is the School Meals Programme, funded by taxpayers and trusted by parents to nourish children. Over \u20ac300 million of public money every year is to be spent on this programme.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd yet \u2013 misleading marketing material goes unchecked, ultra-processed foods are marketed as \u201cnot processed,\u201d and parents are reassured with language that doesn\u2019t match the reality of the quality of this food.\u201d<\/p>\n
The popular health food advocate believes taxpayer cash could be used in a better way \u2013 pointing to how counties like Japan cook their school meals fresh with whole food ingredients.<\/p>\n
\u201cChildren learn where their food comes from, meals are part of education, and food is treated as an essential to health \u2013 not a cost to be minimised. Imagine if our public funding was used similarly,\u201d she told her followers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mayo TD Paul Lawless has told the Agriculture Committee that food labelling \u201cabuse\u201d is happening on the shelves…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":299071,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[3810,141837,42,141838,2142,43,47263,46803,2846,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-299070","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-agriculture","9":"tag-agriculture-committee","10":"tag-headlines","11":"tag-irish-shoppers","12":"tag-kenya","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-paul-lawless","15":"tag-produce","16":"tag-spain","17":"tag-top-news","18":"tag-top-stories","19":"tag-topnews","20":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=299070"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299070\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/299071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}