Lessons for the broiler sector from the

2013 horsemeat incident

Dr Louise Manning

What does the 2013 horsemeat incident tell us?

Source:

The Guardian

business.inquirer.net

Should the industry have seen it coming?

• Length and complexity of

supply chains

• Meat can cross many

borders…

• Processed food –

• multiple ingredients

• non carcase protein

consumption

• composite food

Global trade

Reaction – increase scope of BRC standards

Provenance: whole-life traceability across all protein chains??

Do we rely on process or product verification?

Government reviews to date:

Troop Review

Scudamore Report

Elliott Review

Horizon Scanning: What is coming towards us?

Are we vulnerable?

Food Integrity

• What factors are changing that if they all came together

would be .... The perfect storm... The perfect

opportunity to lose product integrity, provenance or the

environment for food crime to flourish?

• How vulnerable is the poultry supply chain?

• Waste oil used in animal feed – dioxin contamination –

Germany (2011)

• Operation Aberdeen (2001)

• Chicken tumbling to add water …..

Horizon scanning

Operation Aberdeen

• Investigation into a large-scale fraud involving the

diversion of unfit poultry meat into the food chain from a

pet food plant at Denby Poultry Products.

• Purchased waste meat at £25/tonne sold on for human

consumption at £1500/tonne.

• Led to conviction at Nottingham Crown Court in August

2003 of six out of ten defendants.

• Custodial sentences of up to six years were imposed.

• Commodity price trends

• Pressure on retail prices

• The value of substitution

to the food criminal

Economy

• Poverty.. changes to

welfare/benefits

• Drive for cheap food ..

Community – social factors

Tertiary producers: the retailers

Source: The Telegraph

NcNair – Wheel of retailing 1958 (Adapted)

Entry Phase –

low status, low price, limited product offering, low standards

including in supply chain?

Trading – up

Phase

Higher status, higher prices, extended product offering, fashion orientated, essential and higher value services

Vulnerability Phase

Top heaviness, declining ROI including in supply chain? Creating opportunity for an incoming price

orientated retailer

Reasons behind movement in the wheel include:

• Deterioration of managerial ability over time;

• Excess capacity in the retail sector;

• Secular trends believing that the consumer is prepared to pay more for a product feature or service and then there is a “social” change;

• Scrambled merchandising between higher value and traded products;

(Brown , nd)

Brown model of retail change

Growth Maturity

Birth Disintegration

Retailing

The business of selling things directly to customers for their own use.

The functions and activities involved in the selling of commodities directly to consumers.

The CSR/CSNR interaction (Manning, 2013)

What does the poultry sector need to consider with regard to product integrity?

How vulnerable is an integrated supply

chain?

Risk strategies

• Integrity

• Product

• Process

• Countermeasures

• Validation

• Verification

• Horizon scanning

• Known hazards

• Unknown hazards

Environment

Economy Community

Lebel model

Dr Louise Manning

Senior Lecturer in Food Production Management

Royal Agricultural University, Cirencester, UK

Contact: Email louise.manning@rau.ac.uk

• Operation Aberdeen - http://tna.europarchive.org/20130814101929/http://www.food.gov.uk/about-us/how-we-

work/our-board/boardmeetoccasionalpapers/2004/paperinfo03_12_02

• Photos – brcbookshop.com; fao.org; poultryhub.org;