Food contamination

Written evidence submitted by Bob Forsyth

As a former supermarket supplier I have been following the current food fiasco with great interest; our experience of regulation in the "food chain" was as follows:-

1. Defra has lots of regulations, controls like tagging & animal passports to ensure that animal for food production is safe - there will always be the rogue producer but on the whole the system is pretty resilient.

2. Food processors supplying retailers are almost invariably required to adhere to the British Retail Consortium Global Food Standard, this is a really tiresome form filling & box ticking farce that is policed by independent auditors - usually at highly variable levels of stringency & focus e.g.  if the auditor you get has a bee in his bonnet about risk assessments you will be in trouble!!  

   The main problems with this standard are it looks good & credible but:-

    a) It is designed specifically to enable retailers to push responsibility for any problems onto those lower down the chain, ideally all the way down to the primary producer who is usually the safest link in the chain.      

    b) Any scheduled audit once a year is ludicrously easy to falsify results for.

    c) Any food testing carried out is arranged by & paid for by the processor being audited - they won't test anything that's wrong.

    d) All product should be fully traceable through production codes, back trace was always down to the audited, there were never any "secret shopper" tests where product was bought off the shelf, tested & traced back to the primary producer.

   

3.Environmental Health only do pre-arranged look & see inspection for obvious problems & check that paperwork is up to date their role in crises is reactive not pro-active. They simply don't have the resources or the levels of expertise required to do a proper food safety regulation job & shouldn't be made the scapegoat in this.

4. The Food Standards Agency - the real culprits - they have systematically abdicated their responsibilities to the retail and food industry power blocks. They have allowed the BRC Global Food Standard charade to flourish as "The Standard" when it has little to do with actual food safety - it was a standing joke that the most dangerous place in the supply chain was the supermarket itself -. They have allowed their standards to be dictated by industry blocks - 

I questioned them about why the FSA has ruled that red meat cannot be sold as fresh if it has ever been frozen while fish, a far more volatile meat, can be frozen & thawed as often as you like but still sold as fresh fish - I was told that the responsible FSA manager had an "agreement" with the White Fish Industry.

If food standards are to be enforced you need a properly co-ordinated enforcer independent of but paid for by the food industry and there must be criminal penalties & severe sanctions. 

No more cosy relationships with pre-arranged audits, start at the shop counter & work backwards thoroughly & without notice.

It isn't rocket science but it is not going to be easy given the entrenched influence the power blocks have gained within the FSA.

February 2013