Firmer Tests for British Food Traceability

Trading standards officers will be forced to improve how they monitor food on sale, and a new official body run jointly by Defra and the FSA, called the Authenticity Steering Group, is to be designed for testing products and spotting risks.

The report, carried out by the FSA, reveals that the number of food samples taken by councils has fallen by 14.6% since 2012. The proposed plan is the first official response to the failures exposed during the horsemeat scandal.

Andrew Rhodes, director of operations for the FSA, said, “Part of the steering group’s remit would be to ensure that the authenticity programme is targeting the right priorities to make sure enforcers have the methods they need to address emerging food mislabelling and food fraud issues.

“The FSA also needs to improve relations with the food industry, which has sometimes been cautious in sharing intelligence on risks with us in case specifics emerge…that compromise their commercial interests.”

However, Mary Creagh, the shadow environment secretary, said the paper was “a masterpiece of understatement to spare Government ministers embarrassment for their hasty fragmentation of the FSA in 2010. Having taken 24 food authenticity staff away from the FSA, they are now cobbling together a joint secretariat to do the work on authenticity sampling with the 12 staff who remain in Defra.

“Ministers’ actions left the country spectacularly under-prepared for the horsemeat scandal, which is why the Prime Minister had to ask the FSA to co-ordinate the sampling work.”