Editor’s View: Meat scandal reminds us fraud needs fighting
© Adobe Stock A year has passed since Farmers Weekly published shocking allegations about tonnes of imported pork being relabelled as British at a significant meat processing firm, as well as the alleged deliberate flouting of essential food safety rules.
The firm cannot yet be named because it is subject to an active criminal investigation, which imposes tight restrictions on what can be reported for fear of prejudicing any subsequent court trial.
While we keep tabs on that in the background, focus has shifted to the Meat: Our Expectations campaign, which seeks to encourage action among those with the power to make this sort of rule-breaking harder in future.
See more: Farmers Weekly’s meat scandal exposé: One year on
About the author
On this front, there is cause for cheer.
As FW’s deputy editor Abi Kay, who broke the original story, notes in her follow-up article this week, there have been several notable improvements in the past 12 months.
These include the establishment of a specific hotline for factory workers and others to report food crime, a key ask of our campaign.
There is also better information sharing between public sector officials, such as the National Food Crime Unit, and private sector auditors, allowing for better flagging of higher risk businesses.
This was not one shocking incident limited to one bad apple, just the one that we were able to develop to a point where it was safe to print – thanks to the help of high-paid lawyers.
When I think back to the painstaking work that was done in the run-up to publication, the emotion I remember most was our concern for the whistleblowers, many of whom had no such safety net.
They were afraid for their jobs, and some were even afraid that they could come to physical harm for speaking out.
Since that first story was published, there have been credible allegations about other businesses that, so far, we have not been able to print – in large part because of these same fears.
I have every sympathy with folk out there sitting on information because of this, but if you feel able, please do consider reporting what you know to the authorities and to us using the contact details in the article.
There will never be a world without fraud, but we should not wearily tolerate it as a fact of life.
A food chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and we all suffer when it breaks.
Even now, we may be perilously close to disaster with the flow of tonnes of illegal pork through Dover, some of which inspectors have discovered from countries with African swine fever.
It is to be hoped that dodgy shipments can be both traced back to source and followed through to their customers, as would happen with illegal drugs, rather than just the couriers being punished.
Wouldn’t it be great if in the next 12 months the law could collar a porcine Pablo Escobar?