Despite the industry’s efforts to clean up its act in the wake of the horsemeat scandal, “large amounts of meat of dubious origin and quality remains available for purchase through traders and brokers”, Professor Chris Elliott’s post-Horsegate review of the UK food system has warned.
Elliott urged industry and regulators to step up controls on meat traders and cold store operators, which he said posed big potential food fraud risks but were currently inspected less frequently and thoroughly than other parts of the meat industry.
Food inspectors and auditors were generally more concerned with food safety than fraud and therefore considered cold stores, which simply warehouse rather than process meats, to be less risky than meat manufacturing or processing plants. This meant cold stores were often subject to less frequent inspections, Elliott said.
Read this: Horsemeat: Elliott report warns consumers still at risk from criminals
Even when cold stores were inspected, inspectors were rarely “fraud aware” and often carried out announced rather than unannounced inspections, he added. Furthermore, the very working conditions in a cold store meant fraud was extremely difficult to detect, even if inspectors were actively looking for signs of foul play.
At minus 18ºC, the environment for inspection was “extremely inhospitable”, Elliott said, “a lot of stored material is not easy to access without fork lift trucks, and there is ample opportunity both to hide suspect material and to make thorough inspection inconvenient.”
“Any operation undertaking fraudulent activities could undertake thawing, re-freezing, re-packaging, re-labelling and re-strapping out of hours and at weekends and carry on without any great fear of detection”
Elliott report
“As a result, for most of the time, any operation undertaking fraudulent activities could undertake thawing, re-freezing, re-packaging, re-labelling and re-strapping out of hours and at weekends and carry on without any great fear of detection.”
Elliott cited a case, dating back to 2005, of an unnamed cold store in Northern Ireland which was suspected of repacking and re-labelling animal by-products as meat fit for human consumption, but said the criminal investigation at the time lacked resources and the leads generated during the investigation were not followed up (see box, below).
During the horsemeat scandal earlier this year, a number of cold stores were implicated, including a cold store operated by Dutch meat trader Willy Selten, whose poor record-keeping and traceability triggered a 50,000-tonne meat recall across Europe.
Any company purchasing meat from cold stores needed to acknowledge the risk they presented and ensure they were subject to regular, thorough and unannounced inspections, Elliott said. “I also recommend that where they store food materials in cold-stores, other than their own, that they take all necessary measures to ensure that those goods cannot be tampered with during storage.”
Traders and transport
In addition to cold stores, further key areas of fraud risk for the meat industry included meat traders and brokers, vehicles used during transportation of large frozen blocks of meat trim, according to Elliott’s report.
Meat traders and brokers were not currently classed as ‘food business operators’ and therefore were not subject to the same level of scrutiny as the rest of the supply chain, Elliott said. Plus, they were focused primarily on price.
“I have been informed by a number of sources that there are very ethical brokers who are always careful of what they buy and sell, but a number appear, to a greater or lesser extent, to be indifferent to whether they are trading in inauthentic meat or authentic meat, providing it does not impact negatively on their business. I have determined meat traders and brokers as being highly vulnerable links in the supply chain of meat.”
“I have determined meat traders and brokers as being highly vulnerable links in the supply chain of meat”
Elliott report
Some companies implicated in the horsemeat scandal earlier this year, such as ABP Food Group, announced they had decided to cease all business with traders in response to the scandal, but other parts of the industry remain potentially exposed. “The information gathered from a number of sources indicates that large amounts of meat of dubious origin and quality remains available for purchase through traders and brokers,” Elliott said.
To mitigate the risk, accreditation bodies needed to develop standards specifically for traders and brokers, Elliott added. “Such standards must be fraud aware and incorporate disciplines such as forensic accountancy in order to guarantee their rigour. Once the standards for traders and brokers are established, these should become a condition of contract.”
Elliott also said meat companies were exposed to risk when meat was transported by specialist hauliers, as the vehicles used were typically not sealed and therefore vulnerable to tampering. He recommended the industry move to using its own hauliers instead of relying on third parties, or introduce proper auditing and inspection regimes, including anti-fraud measures, for third-party hauliers. “For their own loads, retailers, processors and manufacturers must apply and check tamper-evident seals at every stage of the transport process,” he added.
Elliott’s review is looking at the resilience of the UK food system in general rather than specifically at the drivers behind the horsemeat scandal, but contains a section dedicated specifically to risk factors in the meat industry.
Case Study on Profits from Illegal Operations in a Cold Store
Large scale food fraud seldom comes to notice which is why this example dates back to 2005. Irregularities were noticed when a shipping company notified Department of Agriculture and Rural Development in Northern Ireland (DARD) portal inspectors of a suspicious container that had arrived in Northern Ireland from Asia. This led to a follow-up operation at a cold-store. A warrant was obtained and local police helped secure safe access to the premises. Initially it appeared that there were only a few minor infringements in relation to the ‗temporary‘ storage of a few pallets of ‗category 3 animal-by-product‘ (Cat 3 ABP). However the presence of an industrial shrink-wrapping machine raised concern. It led on to the discovery of other packing and labelling equipment and materials including a copious supply of forged veterinary health marks purporting to originate from a variety of meat plants across the EU. It became evident that the primary business of the cold-store was repacking and re-labelling as fit for human consumption Cat 3 ABP meat.
There was an advertisement encouraging others in the industry to cut their losses by sending out of date stock to a ‗Government approved‘ relabeling service. Evidence was found to demonstrate extensive criminal planning. At that time (or currently) there was no capacity for the major criminal investigation that the evidence and the criminal profits justified. The local Magistrates Court was asked to condemn seized meat and animal by-products as part of legal proceedings.
Meat prices are volatile and so the following calculations are conservative approximations. The meat was worth about £1/kg as pet food, while if sold as medium category mince for human consumption it would be worth £3.50/kg. As there was a large quantity of beef fillets it is reasonable to assume the average price would have been at least £4/kg, on which basis the criminal profit on the meat in the cold store on that day was in the range of £2.5m to £3m. It was strongly suspected that material found was part of an ongoing illegal business but for lack of the necessary investigative resource this was not pursued. The many leads that were opened into food crime networks at this time were not followed up.
No comments yet