Brexit and cost of living crisis raises risk of another horse meat scandal
An advisor to the British government has warned the cost of living crisis, Brexit and government complacency risks creating perfect conditions for fraudsters to exploit the food chain — ten years on from the horse meat meat scandal.
Professor Chris Elliot, an expert in food safety from Queens University Belfast, said he had “deep concerns” that the government’s decision to scrap checks on food imported from the EU was leaving Britain open to fraudsters.
And with consumers looking for bargains as food prices spiral, criminals could seek to “take advantage” of struggling shoppers and create another food fraud crisis.
Writing in New Food Magazine on the anniversary of the scandal (16 January 2023), Prof Elliot, who was commissioned by government to carry out an independent review of the UK food supply chain, said in many ways the response to the scandal had been “enormously beneficial”.
Following his report’s recommendations the Food Industry Intelligence Network, a not-for-profit organisation that sees food companies share intelligence on food authenticity testing, was established, while the National Food Crime Unit and Scottish Food Crime and Incidents Unit were set up to investigate food fraud.
But despite those positive steps, in the past few years an ‘ABC’ of challenges have arisen that are testing the UK food chain’s resilience to fraud.
“A is for austerity,” Prof Elliot wrote. “B is for Brexit and, more specifically, the UK’s exit from the EU’s Food Fraud Network, a high level system of exchanging information and intelligence on food fraud across member states.
“C stands for complacency [which] resides fairly and squarely with the UK government,” he added. “Heaven knows what might happen now.”
Emily Miles, Food Standards Agency chief executive, said the agency has worked hard since the scandal to ensure the food system is more resilient and food is ‘what it says it is’.
“We now have better lines of defence in place,” she said. “Our National Food Crime Unit detects and deters against food fraud alongside better routes for gathering intelligence using data and predictive analytics to monitor in a more targeted way.
“We also have greater confidence in the food industry’s work to protect themselves from fraud, and have access to their sampling data.
“Criminals will always seek opportunities to make an easy profit but we remain vigilant to potential food crime and will always act to protect consumers,” she added.
‘Consumers deserve to see full traceability of produce’
Shoppers are being given the chance to track the origins of their meat — down to videos of the pastures where cattle graze — as part of a new traceability system designed to improve visibility in the meat supply chain.
Online meat retailer Farmison & Co’s ‘Trace Better Meat’ system allows consumers to scan QR codes on packs to find out where their meat was reared and how many food miles it has.
John Pallagi, Farmison & Co founder, said consumers wanted and deserved more transparency around the food they eat, and while the food industry had taken steps to make food safer, the supply chain remained vulnerable.
“The horse meat scandal undoubtedly inspired a great deal of scrutiny from retailers into their supply chains at the time, but I wonder what reforms have been introduced,” Mr Pallagi said.
“I fear the answer isn’t enough and that meat food supply chains remain as opaque and difficult to trace as ever. Reputation management, I would venture, has been more important than addressing the fundamental wrongs of these systems.”
To promote the ‘Trace Better Meat’ scheme a giant, 65 metre-high QR code was a painted at Nook Farm, run by beef and sheep farmers David and Carl Harrison in Grewelthorpe, North Yorkshire.
“In a world revolving around instant information, people today want to know where their food comes from,” they said. “Working in partnership with Farmison & Co, we’re helping to give them more knowledge than ever before.”
- A version of this article first appeared in Farmers Guardian
