The UK government is considering tightening control over the Food Standards Agency (FSA) after news that allegedly fraudulent pork products found their way on to supermarket shelves.
Therésè Coffey, the secretary of state for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), told the House of Commons on Thursday that she would look at bringing the FSA under her department’s control.
An investigation by the trade publication Farmers Weekly found that until at least the end of 2020, one of the UK’s top food manufacturers had sold mislabelled and sometimes rotten meat to retailers.
Meat produced by the supplier, as yet unnamed, is reported to have ended up in products such as ready meals, quiches, sandwiches and other produce sold in Tesco, Asda, Co-op, Morrisons and Marks & Spencer.
The FSA, a non-ministerial agency overseen by the Department of Health and Social Care, which is responsible for public health in relation to food in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, has launched an investigation into the alleged supply chain fraud.
The chair of the environment, food and rural affairs (Efra) select committee, Sir Robert Goodwill told the Guardian that having talked to the Farmers Weekly team behind the investigation, and read the reports, it was “obvious that the inspectors appear to have been misled by the company, which hid the suspect meat, sometimes in lorries or in other parts of the factory, during the time it took for the inspectors to have a cup of tea and put on their protective clothing on.”
He added: “We could be looking at people going to prison because of how serious this all is.”
Goodwill said he had “naively assumed was reporting to Defra but actually it was arm’s length and part of the Department of Health and Social Care, which tends to come to it from a health point of view rather than being closer to the supply chain as Defra would be.”
Asked if a parliamentary inquiry might be launched into the supplier, Goodwill said inquires could take time but that a “one-day evidence session … with people from the FSA” was a possibility.
Any full-blown inquiry might wait until investigations were completed, he said. “We don’t want to undermine the prosecution. But we [the House of Commons cross-party environment food and rural affairs select committee] will be discussing what course of action to take after the Easter recess.”
Defra’s farm minister, Mark Spencer, said he had met the FSA and hoped it would deliver a criminal prosecution. “We will be keeping a close eye on the investigation,” he said. “And we’ll leave that with the Food Standards Agency to deliver a criminal prosecution.”
Spencer said he would not make any further statement on Thursday because of the “ongoing criminal investigation” that involved “very serious allegations” that the FSA had a responsibility to investigate. Spencer said he was in regular contact with the meat industry and the FSA.
The Farmers Weekly investigation found that tens of thousands of tonnes of foreign pork mislabelled as British had been finding its way into the supply chain each week. The supplier has been accused by former employees of regularly “washing” visibly bad hams in saltwater, and of mixing rotting pork with fresh product for further processing.
On Wednesday, Darren Davies, the head of the FSA’s national food crime unit (NFCU), said the agency was “carrying out a criminal investigation into how a supplier was allegedly providing products labelled as British when they were in fact sourced from elsewhere.”
Davies said the investigation was “complex” and that “all new lines of inquiry … including any potential food hygiene breaches at the premises” were being pursued. “If any evidence of a food safety risk is found, then necessary action will be taken,” he said.
Last year, Davies said, the FSA “advised retailers … to check their cooked meat supply chain and to apply extra due diligence in their checks. We don’t give out these alerts without a reason.”
Davies said the cost of living crisis could mean that food fraud increased as suppliers face pressure to turn a profit.
This article was amended on 30 March 2023 and 31 March 2023. An earlier version said that Robert Goodwill was Defra minister of state; in fact he is chair of the environment, food and rural affairs select committee. The original piece implied that the inspectors were from the FSA, but in fact inspections would be carried out by local authorities and the industry’s own auditors. It was further amended to reflect that Goodwill was asked about the possibility of a parliamentary inquiry, not a government inquiry.
