‘We have lost a lot of control’: UK at risk of food fraud, safety expert warns
The head of the inquiry into the horsemeat scandal in 2013 has warned the UK is isolated from intelligence over food supply chains in Europe, increasing the risk of new scandals.
Professor Chris Elliott chaired the government inquiry into the scandal in which horsemeat was substituted for beef in a range of products. Millions of products were withdrawn from supermarket shelves after tests revealed that they were adulterated with horsemeat.
A decade on from the scandal, Elliott said that Brexit meant the UK no longer benefited from membership and intelligence briefings of the EU Agri-Food Fraud Network (FFN), which helps coordinate activities concerning cross-border food fraud. The UK also no longer has full access to the EU’s rapid alert system for food and feed (RASFF) but does receive alerts for issues directly affecting the UK.
Elliott, professor of food safety and founder of the Institute for Global Food Security at Queen’s University Belfast, said: “We have lost a lot of control over the food we consume, particularly food produced outside the UK. There is now no sharing of intelligence on fraud that is happening or suspected to be happening on mainland Europe.” Elliott considers he was given more information from personal contacts in the FFN than “the entire UK government” now has access to.
He said the UK also no longer benefits from the intelligence from checks conducted in Rotterdam in the Netherlands, one of the biggest food ports in the world. UK ports also do not have the same level of infrastructure or facilities to ensure similarly robust checks for food imported directly from third countries or from the EU.
Most consignments of animals and animal products imported from non-EU countries are checked at a border
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