Perhaps I could set the scene in terms of the food industry. As of last year, there were more than 490,000 food businesses in England. In 2011-12,
spending to protect consumers from food incidents was £241 million, 75% of which was spent by local authorities to enforce food law.
One issue the Committee identified was that the Food Standards Agency reports to three key Departments with responsibility for aspects of food policy. Furthermore, there has been a marked fall since 2009-12 in the number of the local authority food samples tested. In addition, there are 12 different national and European databases on food intelligence.
Let me record a little of the history. In November 2012, there was a routine meeting between the Food Safety Authority of Ireland and the UK’s FSA. At that meeting, the Irish FSA mentioned that it was developing a new methodology for checking the composition of meat products. The first question the Committee asked—we are asking it again today—was why it took two months for our own FSA to authorise and conduct any testing.
Tests then found that there had been contamination; it was small in the UK, but it was widespread in the EU. In the UK, horse and pig DNA were found in a variety of beef products, including samples of Findus lasagne, which contained more than 60% horsemeat; Aldi lasagne and spaghetti bolognese, which contained between 30% and 100% horsemeat; and beef products certified as halal and supplied to prisons in England and Wales, which contained pork DNA.
Those findings emerged only after extensive testing of beef products across the EU and by local authorities and industry in the UK. The EU tests revealed that 4.66% of products contained more than 1% horse DNA. The UK incidence of contamination in products tested was less than 1%. Although the contamination was small, and the principle was that this was a labelling and a fraud issue, there could so easily have been a food safety scare and a food safety scandal.
Complacency is not the best word to use, but we have seen no sense of urgency among those on the Government Benches, which is why we welcome my hon. Friend’s appointment as Minister. The Secretary of State or another Minister told us in evidence that the perpetrators of this crime—if it was a crime, and everyone generally understands it is a crime—would face the full force of the law. What arrests have therefore been made? What is the role of Europol and, possibly, Interpol? What charges and prosecutions have been brought by the City of London police to draw a line under this issue?
If we are to boost consumer confidence, which I think we all want to do, we must show there is no further contamination and no prospect of further contamination. We therefore need to know at what stage the contamination and adulteration entered the food supply chain. We talk a lot in the two reports about controls in the food chain, to protect consumers from contaminated and potentially unsafe food, which did not work in the case in question.
Perhaps the most worrying aspect of the matter, as something following on from the BSE crisis, is that every 10 years we have either a food scare or a food crisis. In the early 1990s it was BSE; in 2001 it was foot and mouth disease; and in 2012—we know that it started in 2011—it was the scandal to do with horsemeat contamination, and pork DNA being found in halal meat. That was completely unacceptable.
One worry is identifying the supply chain, and traceability, and we drew some clear conclusions from the evidence. The chief executive of the FSA told us the contamination and adulteration could have been going on for almost a year, from March 2012, when desinewed meat production in this country was banned—there was also a so-called ban in the EU, although we believe it was being produced in the EU.
We concluded that the system for food traceability, including the requirement that at every stage in the supply chain operators must keep records of the source and destination of each product, has been breached; that retailers and meat processors should have been more vigilant about the risk of deliberate adulteration; and that trust is not a sufficient guarantee in a system where meat is traded many times before reaching its final destination. We have also noted our concern about the length of supply chains for processed and frozen beef products. We welcome the efforts of some retailers to shorten those whenever possible.