Farmers Weekly’s meat scandal exposé: One year on

This time last year, Farmers Weekly published an exclusive investigation into a mass food fraud and safety scandal which engulfed the sector. But has any progress been made on tackling food crime one year on?

---

In April 2023, a Farmers Weekly investigation into a meat processor which was committing industrial-scale country of origin fraud and serious food safety breaches led the mainstream news agenda.

The story was picked up by every national newspaper and several broadcasters, including ITV and the BBC, but the name of the business still cannot be revealed for legal reasons.

An evidence file on the case is expected to make its way to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) shortly.

See more: Read the latest news on the Farmers Weekly Meat: Our Expectations campaign

Following publication of the expose, Farmers Weekly launched a campaign – Meat: Our Expectations – issuing several key calls for action to clean up the industry (see Meat: Our Expectations campaign objectives).

Tony Goodger, head of marketing and communications at the Association of Independent Meat Suppliers (Aims), said the investigation acted as a “wake-up call” to regulator the Food Standards Agency (FSA) and the National Food Crime Unit (NFCU), its dedicated law enforcement body.

“It was the kick up the bum they needed,” he said.

“This wasn’t a small bit of fraud, this was industrial scale food fraud for financial gain.”

Head of the NFCU Andrew Quinn told Farmers Weekly there has been a deliberate shift towards focusing even more on prevention of food fraud following the campaign.

“We’ve now got a really clear, focused changing priority in relation to the work we are doing on prevention,” he said.

“We’ve got an outreach team that has got dedicated prevention officers and relationship managers, whose job it is to engage with industry partners, as well as working internally with other parts of the FSA to look at how we might prevent food fraud occurring in the first place.

“We made a deliberate shift in our focus to look more at prevention, realising we’re just not big enough to investigate and prosecute every single thing that’s going across our doors and it’s far better to prevent something happening than try to investigate it afterwards.”

Support from industry

This approach is supported by those in the industry, and those who worked at the factory at the centre of the investigation, as similar practices are believed to be taking place elsewhere.

“It’s way bigger than just this one company,” said a source from the processor, who was subjected to death threats after being suspected of speaking out.  

“They were able to do what they did because of the culture of the industry at that particular time, especially the suppliers they were dealing with.

“All the customers were legitimate, but they were getting duped by mislabelled stuff.”

Intelligence 

At the time of the investigation, Farmers Weekly passed intelligence on to the NFCU about three other businesses, two of which have subsequently been subject to enforcement action.

One of those companies – OTG Foods – was found to be operating unregistered, and 50 tonnes of food products, such as chicken, mince, turkey, steak, fish fingers and sausages were seized and disposed of under a court order.

A fine of £2,166 in costs was levied, and the business was shut down.  

At the second business, which was already on the NFCU’s radar, a “significant quantity” of out-of-date meat was found and disposed of following an unannounced inspection.

“We can’t obviously say what was going to happen to that meat, but we have our suspicions,” said Mr Quinn.

Farmers Weekly’s Meat: Our Expectations campaign was also the impetus for the FSA and NFCU to set up the Food Fraud Industry Working Group, which brought together industry bodies such as retailers, local authorities and the two agencies.

Confidential hotline

As part of its work, the group established a freephone, confidential hotline specifically for people to report food crime.

This was an important campaign objective from Farmers Weekly, because sources from the investigation made clear they were not aware of anyone they could report the issues at the processor, with an existing generic FSA number not publicised.

“There was a considerable spike in calls to the old number following the media interest. Between March and July, the numbers certainly increased,” said Mr Quinn.

“But since we’ve launched the new number, what is really showing is the numbers do seem to be increased, and even more impressively, the number of calls we’re getting that are relevant to National Food Crime Unit business and FSA work is also improved.”

Mr Quinn has already been travelling across the UK, recently to Belfast in Northern Ireland, promoting the number with local media.

There are FSA plans to promote it further in the coming months on social media, and particularly during Great British Beef Week in mid-April.

Promotion

Materials are also being prepared that can be shared with industry partners to enable them to promote the number within their businesses.

The number is not, however, in use outside of normal working hours – unlike the Scottish equivalent which redirects to Crime Stoppers.

Instead, a message outside the hours of 9am-4pm encourages callers to leave a voicemail or fill in an online form.

This form has been significantly simplified since Farmers Weekly’s investigation was published, but is still not yet available in other languages – something Mr Quinn says his colleagues are working on as many staff working in the sector have English as a second language.

Auditors

Another area the Food Fraud Industry Working Group has been focused on is improving intelligence flows between third party auditors and the NFCU.

The Meat: Our Expectations campaign called for the total “mass balance” at processors to be monitored, so authorities can see exactly how much British meat is going into and out of factories.

“We still don’t get all of the intelligence and all of the details we know third-party auditors hold. That would be an ideal situation for us to be in,” said Mr Quinn.

“But we are at least now engaging more with these third-party auditors, and through those trusted relationships, we’ll get intelligence brought to us that we didn’t previously.

“It is an improving situation that came about as a result of these meetings following the campaign.”

Illegal imports 

Though the monitoring of food fraud in the meat sector has improved over the past 12 months, Mr Goodger remains concerned about where illegal imports of meat are heading, with 75t of pork seized at Dover alone since 2022.

He accused the authorities of failing to carry out their duty to keep the public safe by simply seizing meat at the border, rather than following it to its destination to find the criminals further up the supply chain.

Where the FSA has intelligence about unlawfully imported meat, in particular from countries where African swine fever is a known risk, it is shared with relevant local authorities and briefings given on the issues they can expect to see.

But with Defra cutting funding for illegal meat checks at Dover from the end of April, illegal meat importation is still a sizeable risk.

“If pork or other proteins are getting through, which they almost certainly are, where are they going?” said Mr Goodger.

“Who is fraudulently ripping off a supermarket or a pub or the NHS? If we were wearing our headmaster’s hat, this is a good start, since the wake up call, but they must do even better.”

Roundtable

Another key concern raised by experts invited to a Farmers Weekly roundtable on food fraud following the investigation was a lack of Environmental Health Officers (EHOs) to monitor the supply chain.

Existing EHOs are also not taught how to spot fraud as part of their training.

Industry insiders have since suggested the FSA carry out an assessment of EHO need and recommend central government provides the funding for additional posts.

“We are acutely aware that there are shortages in local authority resources,” said Mr Quinn.

“We try and help them prioritise wherever we can by sharing intelligence with them, enabling them to deploy their resources most appropriately.”

Additional powers

The organisation is also close to gaining additional powers that will allow its officers to obtain and execute search warrants without always having to rely on policing partners who do not see food crime as a top priority.

For anyone who is aware of food crime taking place, a source from Farmers Weekly’s investigation has a simple message: “You should come forward. The information is there now and it’s worth doing.”

• If you are aware of any illegal practices taking place in the food chain, please contact Abi Kay on 07714 527 387.