With all the headlines recently about horsemeat in processed food products, it would be easy to lose sight of the fact that the supply chain works remarkably well in delivering good quality, affordable food to people, in many countries 24 hours a day. This is a real achievement, but in the real world nothing is perfect.
Fortunately, the latest scandal is not about a risk to people's health. Rather, it is the inclusion of unexpected and unwanted material, however safe and wholesome it may actually be, which causes concerns. But in instances where products purporting to be made from beef actually contained a high level of horsemeat, there was clearly intent to defraud, and the meat being used in this case would hardly be of the highest quality. Unscrupulous traders will not worry about the source of the cheap meat they are passing off as prime beef; this could just as easily be poor quality beef raised and butchered under unsatisfactory conditions.
There was a potential health risk identified: the possible presence of bute, a painkiller used to treat horses but no longer permitted for human medicine because it causes dangerous side effects in a small number of people. As it turned out, the traces actually found were so low that infeasibly large quantities of the affected meat would have to be eaten to provide a normal dose. But the fact that there was in fact no risk was not due to precautions taken by the suppliers.
The point is that someone wants to make more money than normal and is happy to engage in unethical or illegal activity to achieve that. In that sense, the supplier is no different from the seller of fake perfume or watches. Some people are out to cheat others, in whatever trade they engage in, and the food trade is not immune to this. However, we have more of an emotional stake in what we eat than on what we might wear.
Low levels of horsemeat in what is otherwise 100% beef is more difficult to ascribe definitively to criminal activity. Clearly, it is still something which should not be present, but where and how the contamination occurred is more difficult to determine. In fact, for many commodities, a percent or two of (perfectly wholesome) contamination is quite common. For example, olive oil may well contain small amounts of other vegetable oils.
But the ability to check for particular species or varieties by using PCR to test for 'foreign' DNA brings a different dimension to the exercise. Such testing has, of course, become common for imports of soy into Europe. With soy farming now being dominated by GM varieties, anyone hoping to buy 'GM-free' animal feed has to check every load to ensure that it contains less than the 0.9% 'adventitious' level of GM varieties permitted by EU law. Commodities are rarely pure and the situation is never simple (as Oscar Wilde might have said).
Whenever a contamination scandal such as the present one occurs, there are always those keen to blame the international food supply chain, and encourage us to buy local meat and produce. This presupposes that local suppliers are always more honest, but human nature is the same the world over and there will unfortunately be occasional bad apples. In days past, before our modern food supply chain was forged and when people would have no choice but to buy much more locally-produced food, this was no guarantee of integrity.
Watered milk, short measures in pubs, inaccurate weighing scales, dodgy sausages and more were not the norm, but all still occurred more often than they should have. And with less sophisticated testing available, some frauds were more difficult to detect. The modern supply chain arguably presents fewer opportunities for wrong-doing, since it is more tightly controlled.
Trade is (and always has been) based on mutual trust. In no case is this truer than foods marketed as produced under particular conditions: free-range eggs, ethically-raised meat or organic produce. Unlike most products, these cannot be distinguished on the basis of chemical or biological assays. Although suppliers are accredited either by their customers or independent agencies, backed up by occasional audits, trust is the essential guarantor. It is almost inconceivable that no-one has ever taken advantage of this trust and passed off conventionally-produced food as organic on occasions. Usually, no-one will be any the wiser except for the person with the guilty conscience.
Related to the localism argument is the myth that our ancestors were always self-sufficient in food. Of course, there was relatively little trading in perishable food, which was far more seasonal than the year-round availability we have today. But other goods - grain, oil, salted meat and the infamous fish sauce (made from salted, fermented fish guts) so beloved of Romans – were all regularly traded around the Mediterranean two millennia ago.
Farming was far less productive than today and Rome and other cities simply could not support their populations without imports of wheat from North Africa and other more agriculturally favoured regions. And doubtless there were many unscrupulous traders in Roman times, happy to cheat their customers on occasion for their own benefit.
While it is common to hark back to the good old days, such nostalgia is often misplaced. In the UK, diets were far more basic and there is no evidence that food quality was any better. Small scale local suppliers now often sell goods which would have seemed very exotic to our parents and grandparents. Few of us would want to go back to those days.
In the meantime, general standards of hygiene have been raised in all countries and are usually well enforced. We rightly decry the horsemeat scandal, but we should bear in mind that this is by no means the norm. The problem with food today is not that it is unsafe, but simply that too many of us consume too much of it.
The Scientific Alliance
St John's Innovation Centre
Cowley Road
Cambridge CB4 0WS
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