Horse meat - DNA to catch British Veterinary crooks?

Yesterday, the British Government came under hostile questioning in the House of Commons on the failure to test beef products made from, or adulterated with, horse and pig meat and DNA, when the Irish Government have done so and found irregularities.

Horse meat is almost universally a taboo food in Britain and traces of pig DNA in beef is also unacceptable.

Huge quantities of beef products are being removed from the shelves of British and Irish supermarkets. Stock market values of the companies involved have plummeted.

Putting aside the food fraud and the taboos, we can't imagine there are very deep public health implications from this particular series of incidents.

Let's leave horse burgers and concentrate on the Irish government tests.

They used relatively new and ever cheaper DNA tests and hit the jackpot, they found fraud and adulteration.

Now, by now, the whole world knows that Britain has deliberately done, or not done, inadequate and inappropriate testing for animal and zoonotic disease, often antibiotic resistant, in British livestock and meat, and imported livestock and meat.

Indeed, the Government veterinarians have repeatedly blamed infected imported meat for many outbreaks despite having done no tests and having no proof. Anyone querying their activities, such as the writer, has been subjected to criminal harassment and conspiracy to spread fabrications and defamation.

Now, the Irish, doubtless unintentionally, have blind-sided the British government veterinarians.

If the Irish authorities can test and find tiny quantities of pig DNA in meat, Britain can do the same for animal, human and zoonotic disease. DNA tests should be possible and cheap enough.

They can use the techniques to test past samples of meat to discover what disease was in Britain and when.

Anyone with stored samples of British meat can do the same. Not all British meat and livestock companies are British owned. Not all the samples are in Britain.

The hospitals can do the same, and they can see if the strain is the same, and when zoonotic disease passed to humans and where.

Analysis of strains, mutations, location, species and dates, will enable anyone anywhere to build up a family tree of disease and how it spread in the past.

Any cover-ups or dereliction of duty will be exposed.

It is a real life "cold case" but with many tens of thousands of human casualties and a  much smaller number of corrupt British scientists, civil servants and veterinarians destined for the criminal courts.