The Guardian view on food safety: protection money

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/04/guardian-view-food-safety-protection-money

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Adulterated food has a long and tawdry history. Traders have been trying to get more for less by putting powdered plaster in flour and water in milk since trading began, and local councils have been trying to protect consumers against them for at least the last 150 years. Thursday’s long-awaited and much delayed report by Professor Chris Elliott into the horsemeat scandal suggests that at last the government is taking the problem seriously. It is an important recognition that regulation with too light a touch has let organised crime into a business where the supermarkets’ relentless search for competitive advantage means constant downward pressure on suppliers’ prices. And at the end of the chain, there are the victims – the consumers who rely on cheap food.

There is a tide in the political history of food protection. Any effective system is likely to come up hard against the food industry. That seemed to be the fate of the Food Standards Agency, which was conceived in 1997 in the wake of the BSE catastrophe, in one of the incoming Labour government’s first major pieces of legislation. It was to be an independent voice safeguarding the public, formulating policy and advising the government. Its operation was to be entirely transparent. So effective was it that it became locked in a battle with food manufacturers and some of the big retailers over the introduction of a traffic light system indicating the nutritional value of food. In 2010, the incoming Conservative health secretary, Andrew Lansley, announced he wanted to abolish it. The FSA survived in name, but it was eviscerated, with its responsibilities split, while at the same time budget cuts severely hampered the ability of local government to police food standards.

No surprise then that the criminal substitution of horsemeat for beef in burgers and meat dishes like lasagne was picked up by Irish inspectors, not the UK, although once the food standards inspectors started looking, the problem was found to be rife. The Guardian unravelled part of the chain of adulterated meat from abattoirs overseas to cold stores and food processing plants in the UK and Ireland. Then, in July, the Guardian revealed a new, shocking breach of food safety when secret filming in a poultry processing plant showed appalling standards of hygiene that were belatedly confirmed by officials. Now the government is to act. The new environment secretary, Liz Truss, has made a welcome commitment to restore public confidence in food. She will accept the report’s main recommendations, of which the most important is that there is to be a designated food crime unit in the FSA. But details are yet to be announced. The FSA remains a shadow of its former self. Saving what is left of the public lab service will need money. There is a long way to go.