Shadow Defra minister Mary Creagh told MPs today about her fears that a carcinogenic drug commonly used as an anti-inflammatory in horses could have entered the human food chain. Speaking in the Commons, she said:
‘I am in receipt of evidence showing that several horses slaughtered in UK abattoirs last year tested positive for phenylbutazone, or bute, a drug which causes cancer in humans and is banned from the human food chain. It is possible that those animals entered the human food chain.’
As I wrote on Coffee House on Tuesday, it was Defra’s decision last autumn to abolish the National Equine Database which has got us into this mess. Previously, the database contained details of all British horses and their passport details, enabling people to trace all the drugs a horse has ever been given. But when Creagh brought up the topic of horse passports in last week’s statement on the horsemeat burger scandal, David Heath, the Farming Minister, dismissed any claims that horse passports were relevant to the story.
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