Horses Getting Political? Welcome to the UK!

By Nathaniel Mowson

The Opposition has blamed the Government for the horsemeat scandal by stating cuts and a deregulated food industry left the door open to unwelcome ingredients and practices. The FSA, Food Standards Agency was the only agency with responsibility for food safety after the "bonfire of the quangos". However, since then food composition (ie, the nutritionally important components of food) and food labelling have been handled by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whereas, food safety has stayed an FSA responsibility.

Mary Creagh Shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs stated that the "The government has taken a system that was working reasonably well and in a drive to deregulate, has created a more fragmented and bureaucratic system and this horsemeat scandal has shown that there are serious flaws that need to be addressed". Another situation involving our food standards and safety is that trading standards officers work for local authorities and are responsible for foood inspections across the UK. The service has been badly hit with the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills estimating that funding will fall from £213m in 2011-12 to £140m by 2014. Karen Jennings, Unison's assistant general secretary claims the figure had already fallen from £280m in recent years. If this is correct the funding would have been halfed by 2014. "Trading standards officers work hard to ensure that products pose no risk to consumers, but as their budgets are slashed, their ability to identify problems, inspect premises and prosecute wrongdoers has become severely limited". Unison were informed that 743 trading standards jobs were lost at council level between 2009-10 and 2011-12 after filing a freedom of information request.

The Coalition speaking in support of the current system stated that "By law retailers are ultimately responsible for ensuring their products' safety and accurate labelling. However, we join up across government to back this up with more than 100,000 risk-based checks each year."

Last year the British Horse Society criticised a withdrawal of funding for a national database. They claim this has made it easier to import horses for use in food by merely acquiring extra horse passports. The society states that each passport must contain details of medical information such as all the drugs the horse has been given throughout its life. "If a horse receives certain drugs, it may not be slaughtered for human consumption due to fears over the effects of these drugs on people. However, with no central database to facilitate checks it is now possible for a horse to be issued with two passports; one in which medication is recorded and an apparently clean one to be presented at the time of slaughter – allowing the medicated horse to be passed as fit for consumption."