Is the Food Standards Agency and its National Food Crime Unit fit for purpose?

An “industrial-scale” meat fraud scandal has rocked the industry, with fresh claims surrounding food safety breaches so serious that Professor Chris Elliott, of the Institute for Global Food Security at Queen’s University Belfast, has described the scandal as potentially worse than the Horsegate scandal he investigated a decade ago.

A Farmers Weekly investigation claimed a supplier had (until at least the end of 2020) been passing off tens of thousands of tonnes of imported pork as British every week through a complex deception – which allegedly saw it mixing small amounts of British pork with cheaper imported product in a bid to falsely claim UK provenance on country-of-origin documentation.

The business was also accused of widespread food safety breaches, including the regular “washing” of hams visibly off and the mixing of rotting pork with fresh product for further processing.

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