From horsegate to chickengate
They say when one door closes, another will open. In this case, the door is a meat/poultry scandal. No sooner had the FSA confirmed that no horsemeat has been found in latest testing than it was releasing news that more than half of shop-bought chickens are contaminated with campylobacter.
Let’s start with the good news: on 22 July, the FSA published results of the latest round of industry and European Union (EU) testing. Results found no horsemeat DNA in meat products at or above the 1% reporting threshold. These tests were carried out to check that beef products on sale or supplied into the UK food chain were accurately labelled and did not contain horsemeat DNA, following the discovery of horsemeat in a range of products for sale across Europe.
And now the bad: on 5 August, the FSA published the first set of quarterly results from a new survey of campylobacter on fresh shop-bought chickens. The results show 59% of birds tested positive for the presence of campylobacter. In 4% of samples, campylobacter was identified on the outside of the packaging.
Campylobacter is killed by thorough cooking, however, it is the most common form of food poisoning in the UK, affecting an estimated 280,000 people a year. The majority of these cases come from contaminated poultry.
In the September issue of Food & Drink Technology, Nick Miller, head of FMCG from supply chain consultancy firm Crimson & Co, will be looking at the latest scandal in depth. He believes that while the findings are extremely concerning, they are not all that surprising; over the past year, the horsemeat scandal combined with the recent example of major retailers purchasing stock farmed via slavery suggests that while firms talk a good game when it comes to ensuring effective and ethical supply chains, the reality can be very different.
Miller will explain that the focus for firms must now be to have clear sight across their entire supply chains, and will draw on the approach of other sectors as to how this can be addressed. For example, the pharmaceutical industry passed a directive in 2012 which meant it became a legal requirement for all manufacturers to apply European auditing standards to all their manufacturers and the ingredients they use within this.
Could adding something similar across the food and retail sector be the answer? Look out for Miller’s comments in the September issue of Food & Drink Technology, published next month.
