UK food fraud force reviews laws
need to be tightened to preventcases such as the Euro Freeze
scandal from occurring again.
Food fraud can result in processors receiving illegally sourced meat that that may be of lowquality or even unfit for human consumption, posing a health risk for consumers and a businessproblem for manufacturers.
Such trade cuts into the sales of legitimate food producers by placing cheaper products on themarket. Adulterated butter, buffalo meat declared as beef, tigernuts imported as flower bulbs aresome of the products that have been stopped at the EU's borders.
The task force was set up by the Food Standards Agency (FSA) board in April 2006 to initiallyconcentrate on red and white meat fraud, but it will consider other food sector problems later in theprocess. It was also tasked to propose sufficient legal deterrents to make it less attractive for people to engage in food fraud.
The task force was launched in the wake of the FSA investigation into Euro Freeze, a NorthernIreland cold store operation that allegedly was involved in the illicit repackaging, re-labelling and distribution ofmeat throughout the EU. In August this year, a UK court condemned the meat from Euro Freeze ashaving illegal health labeling and ordered the destruction of 254 pallets.
In a report released ahead of a FSA board meeting on 12 October, the task force recommends that current legislationand traceability procedures need to be reviewed.
The task force has also said it would consider the current controls in place to deal with food fraud and their, suitability to control and deter food fraud.The review includes a review of health marking requirements. The task force will also review inspection and audit arrangements for meat plants particularly coldstores.
It will also consider whether inspections should be made more frequent so as to assess food fraud risk.It will also review of the roles and effectiveness of the Illegal Meat Task Force, the food fraud data base and theFSA's local authorities.
Laws relating to the prosecution and penalties will also be reviewed to see whether they act as asufficient deterrent to food fraud.
The members of the task force include those representing regulators, government agencies, the British Retail Consortium,the British Poultry Council, the Food and Drink Federation, consumer group Which?, and the Dungannon Meats Group.
On 1 January this year EU laws on traceability that entered into force on 1 January 2005. Thelaws harmonises the bloc's requirements on the traceability of food products, the withdrawal ofdangerous products from the market, operator responsibilities and requirements applicable to importsand exports.
The new mandatory traceability requirement applies to all food, animal feed, food-producinganimals and all types of food chain operators from the farming sector to processing, transport,storage, distribution and retail to the consumer.
All information on the name, address of producer, nature of products and date of transaction mustbe systematically registered within each operator's traceability system. The law requires theinformation to be kept for a period of five years and on request, it must immediately be madeavailable to regulators.
