Not for the first time, the US ambassador to the United Kingdom, Woody Johnson, last week insisted that the UK must lower its food standards if it wants to trade with the USA post-Brexit. In an article for the Daily Telegraph newspaper, Mr Johnson referred to our existing food regulations as coming from the “European museum of agriculture” before he put forward an unconvincing case for the virtues of chlorinated […]
Here are two interesting facts. Britain exports millions of eggs each year. Britain also imports millions of eggs each year. This is but one example of the inherent illogicality of a globally-focused food industry. Within days of the discovery that eggs in the Netherlands had been contaminated with the pesticide fipronil, seventeen countries including the UK confirmed that they had imported eggs that were affected. Each of those countries produces […]
Three weeks ago the Guardian newspaper reported an attempt by the British government to shelve publication of the official report from an Inquiry into the country’s 2013 horse meat scandal. Yesterday, the report was finally published. The Inquiry, chaired by Professor Chris Elliott of Belfast’s Queens University, had been set up to investigate how horse meat had managed to find its way into a range of processed meat products for […]
As I write this post it is now a year since the so-called horsemeat scandal erupted in the UK, after horse DNA was found in beefburgers and beef lasagne ready meals for sale in British supermarkets Leaving aside the issue of criminality, what the scandal really revealed was how difficult it is to trace the origin of imported produce in our food supply chain. It showed that the longer and […]