Government denies confusion in tackling horsemeat

10-Oct-2013 - Last updated on 11-Oct-2013 at 12:44 GMT

The government has defended the FSA's response to the horsemeat crisis

Tackling the horsemeat scandal was not hampered by confusion over the roles of different agencies and departments, according to the government, despite independent reviews claiming otherwise.

The Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee published the government’s response to its latest report into the handling of the issue, Food Contamination: Government Response to the Committee's Fifth Report of Session 2013-14, today (October 11).

In it, the government states the Food Standards Agency’s (FSA’s) role remained unchanged following departmental changes in 2010.

“It is perfectly normal for policy responsibility to be with ministers and responsibility for enforcement to be with a separate delivery body.

“This is a situation mirrored across government and the government does not accept that the current division of responsibilities between DEFRA [the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs] and FSA undermined the response to the horsemeat incident.”

It was responding to EFRA select committee claims there was a “lack of clarity as a result of the machinery of government changes about where responsibility lay for the response to the horsemeat discovery”.

‘Greater clarity’

The committee called for “greater clarity about the role of the FSA in major incidents”. A report issued by the National Audit Office yesterday (October 10) made similar claims.

Despite the committee’s claims that the response from the FSA to the horsemeat food fraud issue had been slow, the government leapt to its defence.

“In paragraphs 54 and 78 of its report, the committee criticises the FSA for failing to take pre-emptive action in November 2012 when it learnt of testing for horsemeat undertaken by others … This criticism is based on a false premise.”

It said the Food Safety Authority of Ireland had informed the FSA it was developing methods for testing for horse DNA. But it indicated neither that tests were underway, nor that there were any concerns about horsemeat contamination.

It said “the collaborative way in which the FSA, ministers, the food industry and other agencies worked rapidly to respond to the events in question was successful and is a positive model for future joint-working”.

‘FSA responded decisively’

“The FSA was informed that adulteration of product had taken place on January 14 2013, and responded decisively within hours …”

Turning to the responsibilities of the food supply chain, the government reassured industry it would work with it to strengthen authenticity testing and avoid burdening it with unnecessary legislation.

However, it did say that it would consider changes to food labelling regulations should its separate independent review of the integrity and assurance of food supply networks call for them.

It acknowledged concerns about the lack of public analysts to police the supply chain, but said the FSA and DEFRA were guarding against this issue causing problems.

Work was also in place to ensure live food and feed sample monitoring was rolled out to England and Wales through the FSA’s Food Surveillance System, already used in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Despite three local authorities being shown to have done no food standards sampling in 2011–2012, this was remedied in 2012-2013. The government also added it was considering giving the FSA additional powers to ensure local authority sampling.

The government’s full response to the EFRA Select Committee’s Fifth Report of Session 2013–2014 can be found here.