The Grocer – 13 January 2018

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Five ‘explosive’ findings of the Elliott review

● Complex supply

chains and demands

for cheap food fuelled

our exposure to

fraudsters. Buying

strawberries in

winter and Brussels

sprouts during a

heatwave might give

British shoppers

more choice but this

global food market

‘has become a highly

complex system’

with consumers

accustomed to

‘variety and access

at low cost, and at

marginal profit to

suppliers’. This ‘very

competitive’ climate

with ‘a constant

drive to reduce

cost and maximise

profits’ increased

opportunities for food

crime, found Elliott.

● An intelligence

‘impasse’ left food

crime bottom of the

agenda. A vicious

cycle between lack

of intelligence and

police priorities

meant crucial

information on food

crime was neither

being gathered nor

shared. Quite simply

‘police do not become

involved in food crime

for lack of criminal

intelligence justifying

their involvement,

while criminal

intelligence is not

sought in relation to

food crime because

it is not a police

priority’.

● Deep cuts left

enforcement services

in dire straits. Billions

of pounds worth of

budget cuts were

implemented under

the coalition between

2010 and 2015.

Trading Standards

departments were ‘cut

to the bone’, with an

average funding cut of

40%.

● Britain was

unprepared. Elliott

urged the FSA to

develop more ‘robust

mechanisms to

respond quickly and

decisively’ including

strengthening its

Major Incident Plan

and consulting with

crisis management

experts. Elliott also

criticised insufficient

lab facilities in the UK,

with many products

sent outside the

country for testing,

and the government’s

decision to split

responsibility for food

authenticity between

the FSA and Defra

only adding to the

confusion.

● Industry can’t afford

to turn a blind eye.

Retailers that suspect

dodgy dealings must

investigate and, if

necessary, share

intelligence, urged

Elliott. Or risk being

seen as complicit. A

supermarket securing

food well below the

market price, for

instance, where ‘it

might be inferred

that the most obvious

way the supplier was

meeting that price was

by committing fraud

by misrepresentation’,

has to be able to show

it had zero grounds for

suspicion that product

was counterfeit or

adulterated.

to criminals with livestock prices as they are these
days, and the cost of legal slaughtering so high.
But though “it’s not impossible it will happen again,
the reputational damage to the retailers means they’re
much sharper now,” adds Batley. There was too much
reputational damage to them and their supply chains
to get tangled up in anything like that again. That has
probably been far more powerful than any regulatory
solutions yet devised.”
Reilly agrees. “We won’t have another horsemeat
scandal as the industry have taken over the quality
assurance,” he says. “These days you can’t buy that
type of processing beef on the international market
without a certificate of authentication.
“That was led by the likes of Tesco, who were particu-
larly burned by the horsemeat scandal. The industry
have the checks and balances in place. But food fraud
is a serious issue, not only in Europe but globally. It
ha sn’t gone away.”
“What Professor Elliott flushed out was that it was a
major source of illegal funds,” adds Paterson. “We had
to ramp up the attitude. It wasn’t just a fraud, it was a
crime. It still is potentially a major area of crime and
it needs to be taken seriously at the highest levels to
ensure we do have a proper intelligence-based unit as
we originally planned following his report.”

Need to improve intelligence

Currently that isn’t the case, in Briars’ view. “This could
happen tomorrow and nobody would be able to deal
with it. There’s no capacity to investigate this type of
fraud. The National Food Crime Unit has become an
information data centre rather than having a dynamic
capacity to go and investigate. Is there a capacity to
respond to a large national food fraud? I don’t think
t here is.”
Opie is reluctant to provide a firm view on whether
we could see Horsegate 2.0. “That’s purely specula-
tive so I’m not going to answer that but we still need
to go further to improve intelligence,” he says. “And
not only intelligence but the exchange of information
around incidents.
“We know that during the fipronil incident the flow
of information from affected countries did not work
particularly well and made it extremely difficult for
retailers to trace products potentially affected. I can’t
speculate but there is definitely more to be done to make
the system more robust.”
For Elliott, it’s a familiar question “posed to me a
number of times” since the story broke.
“I would always say the amount of money that can
be made in food fraud is staggering. Criminals are
criminals, they’ll always try to set out to exploit sys-
tems, look for gaps and weaknesses. The food system
isn’t getting less complicated but more, with crop fail-
ures due to climate change, the growing middle class
in China and India, and Brexit another one of the great
unknowns – all those things are drivers for fraud.
“The UK is in a much stronger position post-Horse-
gate but we can’t relax for a moment. People will always
be out there trying to test the system.”
And the events of 2013 will forever act as a stark
reminder of the pandemonium that can be unleashed
when they succeed.