The blame game began over the meat fraud scandal | Comment and opinion

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As the meat fraud case sends shockwaves through the industry, the first cracks in the arsenal of new measures introduced since the Horsegate scandal have come to light.

These measures included an overhaul of audit regimes, supported by changes to the standards of major certification bodies; shorter supply chains, with no more than two ownership changes (three for deli meats); information sharing, with the help of the new Food Industry Intelligence Network; new enforcement capability through the National Food Crime Unit; and cultural changes such as better representation of technical and security directors at the board level.

In addition to certification, retailers, wholesalers and suppliers linked to the latest case also cited as mitigation measures, supplier codes of conduct, the role of technical services and customer complaints teams, and site visits. unannounced audit.

And yet, as crude new images have emerged of gross food safety violations, it’s clear that horrible things have happened.

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As the industry desperately hopes this is a bad apple rather than a systemic failure, the blame game has begun, with the Food Standards Agency and its NFCU in the crosshairs of their management of crisis. Defra is even considering taking the agency under its wing. Creepy.

Yet as the scale of the deception emerges (with six million documents currently under review), its clear people are looking in the wrong places. And the FSA is in an odious position here, crippled by the threat of compromising a national crime investigation and abusing College of Policing advice. Indeed, as he prepares to meet with the industry next week so that lessons can be learned, the weakest link in the chain mail is not the FSA but the reduction of standards officers. from 560 in 2013 (i.e. after Horsegate) to just 345 in England, Wales and Northern Ireland at last count.

As FSA CEO Emily Miles told us this week, after alerting the relevant local authority to potential fraud in 2020 and sending a follow-up reminder, she was forced to conduct her own investigation. Who is responsible for this failure?

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