You might as well tell a fox not to chase chickens or a cat not to stalk sparrows as to ask horse meat criminals not to mess with passports and microchips.

Hence the only answer is to outsmart the perpetrators that are doing so much damage to the whole industry.

It is not just the horse meat and slaughter end of things that are affected, it is the reputation of Ireland as the home of the horse that is at stake.

A smart industry wide response is needed and currently this does not exist. As a result the scammers are running rings around the authorities who lack the tools to fully combat them.

Technology

It is hard to believe that there are no means of detecting false microchips and passports at the checks currently being carried out at slaughter houses.

If somewhere along the line in Europe an alarm can be raised about a particular shipment of horse meat from here then why could the same red flag not have been raised before that consignment leaves our shores?

There are a couple of questions which need to be asked. Is the current microchip and passport system in use too weak and easily tampered with?

Are the Gardaí confronted with a system that is so wide open and vulnerable that they are like the farmer shutting the hen house only after the fox has left?

Are we not due a technology update to the whole system in place, plus the methodology of creating and checking microchips and passports to be fully investigated and updated?

As one veterinary surgeon I spoke with said: “It is time to call in the IT people.”

A job for the universities?

It is rumoured that the microchips and passports involved in the recent scandals have their origin in a foreign country. This would suggest that some smart individuals are making money by counterfeiting both passports and microchips that then available to be purchased by scammers.

Could this whole problem not become a major study by one of our universities to find a failsafe system that cannot be tampered with?

Surely there is a way to ensure that chips show their country of origin, just like our money bills, and that passports also show that they are genuinely once off Irish.

If sure answers are found we will all benefit.