SIR – An EU ruling paved the way for this horsemeat crisis.

A directive issued by EU officials in 2006 scrapped daily inspections at plants where carcasses are butchered before being processed into ready meals.

Following the introduction of the EU directive, the UK’s Food Standards Agency meat inspectors began to give plant operators advance notice of their visits, sometimes as far ahead as two months – so allowing them to prepare for inspections.

Before the EU changes there was an inspector in meat cutting plants nosing about on a daily basis.

They would spot if anything was wrong. They would see what went into chillers, they would see if food was properly labelled, they could see if the carcass being minced was beef or horse.

Until the changes, Britain’s meat hygiene standards were regarded as some of the world’s best following the introduction of tough new regulations for meat cutting and processing plants in the wake of the BSE and E-coli crises of the 1990s.

This latest EU-inspired farce again illustrates the incompetence of the Brussels bureaucracy, and is yet another example (if one is needed) of why we must exit the EU at the first opportunity.

M DALEBO Worcester