The Food Standards Agency (FSA) has published a message which sets out the latest proposals from the Food Fraud Working Group.
The proposals aim "to strengthen the collective response to food crime" include:
- Launching a new freephone number for the food fraud hotline to make it easier for people to speak up and share their concerns
- Working with industry on ways to encourage food fraud whistleblowing
- Strengthening information sharing arrangements between the third-party auditors used by food businesses, and the FSA, to help prevent criminal activity
- Improving how the FSA issues intelligence-based alerts to better warn food businesses about potential food fraud in supply chains.
CEO of the FSA, Emily Miles, said: “The UK has some of the safest and most authentic food in the world, but there will always be a threat of criminality in the food system.
"Food businesses are the first and most important line of defence and we want to support them. This is one of the reasons why we launched a working group to explore together whether some areas of our collective response to food crime can be improved.
"Together, we’re making it easier to share intelligence and information by helping people who work in the food system to share their concerns with us freely and confidentially.
"Our research suggests that for businesses and consumers feeling the financial strain, the cost of food crime still matters.”
Two research reports were published by the FSA, one of which estimated that food crime costs the UK economy up to nearly £2 billion a year (as detailed in The Cost of Food Crime), and the other that made recommendations on food crime prevention.
This story was originally published on a previous version of the Meat Management website and so there may be some missing images and formatting issues.
