About a year ago, the horsemeat scandal made headline news across Europe and even further. The story, that horsemeat was being passed off as beef, exposed the complex nature of our globalised food supply chain. It also demonstrated that fraudsters were taking advantage of weaknesses in the system to the detriment of both legitimate businesses and consumers. As a consequence, consumer trust and confidence in the food processing industry hit an all-time low.
Given the pan-European dimension of the scandal, and although not designed with fraud in mind, Europe's rapid alert system for food and feed (RASFF) was used by the European Commission and the national food safety authorities to swiftly exchange information on test results and on on-going investigations. Public authorities and food operators were mobilized to gain a better picture of the problem and to trace the origin of the cross-border fraud. It was rapidly established that the safety of products was not at stake but the scale of the fraud highlighted the limitations of the enforcement tools available to public authorities. It soon became clear that such large-scale threats to the food supply chain need to be addressed at EU level and not only at the level of member states.
The Commission reacted swiftly and launched an action plan in March 2013 which listed a series of measures to be implemented over the short, medium and long-term, to tackle the shortcomings identified in Europe's food supply chain and to combat food fraud.
As a first and immediate action the Commission – together with the member states – launched in the beginning of March 2013 a coordinated EU-wide testing for horsemeat DNA and the forbidden substance “phenylbutazone”. The results, published in mid April 2013, revealed that less than 5% of the tested processed beef products contained horse DNA and that only about 0.6% of the equine carcasses were found to be contaminated with the substance.
Almost one year on, what has been achieved?
1. Resources have been pooled to carry out coordinated monitoring, inspections and testing of suspected cases of food fraud. EU legislation is being re-designed so that EU-wide inspections and tests are carried out by EU member states at the request of the Commission.
2. EU legislation on controls and financial penalties was proposed to the co-legislators – the European Parliament and the member states – to ensure that such penalties are at least equal to the fraudulent gains that criminals would expect to make, as only dissuasive financial sanctions can prevent food fraudsters.
3. Closer cooperation is being fostered between actors involved in combating cross-border food fraud. One key action has been the setting up of a “European Food Fraud Network” to ensure more efficient handling of suspected cases of food fraud that have a cross-border dimension. This network was created in July 2013 and is comprised of experts from the 28 EU countries, plus Norway, Iceland and Lichtenstein and is led by the Commission. It is already dealing with around 20 cases of cross-border food fraud. These include the import of syrup sold in the EU as honey from a non-EU country, the weight of frozen seafood being increased by adding water and false indication of the origin of seafood. Food safety and judicial experts will also benefit from specialised training sessions on new investigation and control techniques applied to food fraud within the EU training framework – Better Training for Safer Food.
4. Another important step will be agreement on the revised rules aimed at reinforcing the identification of horses and improving traceability of their residence. Under this draft legislation, EU member states will set up a central database into which passport issuing bodies will feed identification details. The introduction of additional security features for horse passports should make their fraudulent alteration more difficult.
To conclude, it is worth remembering that the vast majority of food businesses are legitimate and law-abiding. However, if we want to maintain the highest possible level of protecting consumer interests, a clear message needs to be sent that we are only as strong as our weakest link in the food chain and that we are working with all our partners to ensure that everyone shoulders their responsibilities so that any existing gaps are closed. Our work, in collaboration with all actors involved, EU institutions, control authorities of the member states and stakeholders has come a long way to ensure that known gaps are being closed effectively. Let me emphasise, that the EU food chain is probably the safest in the world and any food item can be traced and removed from the market in a matter of hours following an alert.
The assault on consumer confidence from last year's food fraud may not be the last, but since then we have made it much harder for fraudsters to repeat such crimes. Consumers have witnessed a pan-European fully transparent response which has been swift, effective and comprehensive. A year later, there is every reason to expect that consumer confidence in the food safety system should be higher than it was before.
Dr Borg is EU Commissioner for Health