It's the end of 2012 in Dublin, a chill, great day outside with Christmas just around

the corner.

And inside the food safety authority of Ireland, the head of the agency, Alan Riley asked

one of his employees to run a test.

It was coming up to the end of the year in 2012 and I asked one of my staff to go out

and purchase the type of products that she would buy for her children.

I'm randomly selected, whatever she wants to buy, that's what we run out to buy.

The budget was tight this year, but the authority was using a sophisticated, expensive kind

of DNA testing, a cutting edge method to show whether there were any traces of other species

in the paddies labeled beef.

And she bought burgers because these are cheap and they can go on the freezer and so on,

they're easy to cook, very convenient.

He says they were in a hurry to get these tests done before the holidays when everyone

would be off on break.

And then one day in December, after the samples have been sent off to a lab, he gets this

email.

I remember precisely where I was when I found out that we had the serious problem.

I was a Friday evening.

I was sitting in the office.

I got a notification it was a laboratory report from a laboratory in Germany and that came

in attached to an email and when I read that and I saw the results, it confirmed the

fact that we had a major problem on their hands.

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