Hansard

In September I was pleased to bring to the Parliament a members’ business debate on the Fife diet manifesto. I hoped to start or encourage discussion about our relationship with food, how we eat and how we grow and trade food. The need for such discussion has, if anything, intensified in the wake of recent food scandals, and it is unfortunate that it has needed a crisis to bring us to this point.

I doubt that any member disagrees with the cabinet secretary when he says that Scotland produces some of the world’s finest food and that our food and drink industry is a vital part of the Scottish economy. However, although we recognise the contribution of our farming sector and our fishermen and although we welcome initiatives that promote the best of what Scotland has to offer, the stark reality is that food banks are on the rise, the demand for food parcels has doubled and, according to Save the Children, one in six children goes to bed hungry every night.

In the debate in September, members discussed a food sector that is dominated by a few companies. In recent weeks, we have seen how such companies influence the food chain. The horsemeat scandal magnified the issue, implicating large companies that many people considered to be reputable, safe and trustworthy, such as Findus, Birds Eye, Tesco and Asda.

It is right that we challenge supermarkets about their supply chains and that we identify the need for more European Union action on labelling. However, the Scottish Government has responsibility for regulation and implementation in Scotland, and recent events force us to ask whether our system is robust enough to be able to restore consumers’ confidence and trust. The restoration of trust would benefit industry as well as consumers.

We await final results from DNA testing and, given the weekly reports of a new company or product being implicated in relation to food fraud, it seems that we have not yet resolved the problem. It is important that we ask the hard questions. We can acknowledge the strong approach to traceability in Scottish farming and the positives of our food sector, but we cannot be complacent.

Since the cabinet secretary’s statement on the horsemeat scandal, we have learned that two large catering companies, Brakes and Sodexo, which supply the public sector, have been supplying adulterated meat products. Questions about who supplied the companies with those products remain unanswered. Has the cabinet secretary been told who supplied the meat? If so, will he inform Parliament and consumers? If we are to aim for a transparent food chain and full traceability, we need to know where the processed meat originated. If we are to restore consumer confidence, we must ensure that all information is available and that there is full traceability to where the horsemeat originated.

In his statement to the Parliament, the cabinet secretary told us that food and drink contracts are awarded with regard to a balance between price and quality. We were told that quality is vital in the awarding of a contract and that the lowest price will not necessarily win the contract.

It has since been revealed that the Scotland Excel contract for school catering is awarding a weighting of 65 per cent to price compared with 20 per cent to quality. Cost is therefore given more than three times greater weighting than quality. That is not a balance. Was the cabinet secretary aware of the 65:20 ratio weighting when he made the statement to Parliament? Does he agree that it would have been better to have greater clarity for members and parents?

Recently, it was announced that the Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs and the Environment would join the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning in hosting a school meals summit. We now know that the average cost for a school meal is as low as £1.68. Although we can point towards local authorities such as East Ayrshire Council and its focus on local food sourcing, it is evident that local authorities have been encouraged towards national procurement contracts as a means to deliver best value.

Parents and carers should be able to send their children to school in confidence that the lunch that they eat is healthy, nutritious and exactly as described. For some children across Scotland, the school dinner is their only meal of the day. Transparency, traceability and quality must be higher on the agenda. We look forward to hearing more from the cabinet secretary on the outcomes of the recent summit.

We will probably never know how much horsemeat was in the food chain prior to the breakout of the scandal or how long the adulteration of food had been taking place. It has been clear throughout that the complexity of the supply chains and the relationships between companies have been difficult for people to understand. If the Food Safety Authority of Ireland had not found traces of horsemeat DNA in beefburgers on 15 January, there is every chance that the recall of contaminated products would not be taking place.

The Ulster Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals believes that there are 70,000 horses unaccounted for in Northern Ireland. Through the close working of the USPCA and the Scottish SPCA, we know that Scottish ports have been used in the transportation of maltreated horses with fake passports. Was the cabinet secretary aware of the conviction and subsequent fine of a horse trader from Northern Ireland in November 2012 at Stranraer sheriff court for transporting maltreated horses with no or fake passports? In the current circumstances, that recent conviction is concerning. Did any information sharing take place on that conviction? Of course, hindsight is a wonderful thing, but we can perhaps now recognise that there is a greater need for agencies to share information. Sometimes the connections are not easy to identify.

A national debate started because of the horsemeat scandal, but that has grown into a much wider examination of food standards. Waitrose withdrew a product that was contaminated with pork at its Shettleston plant, which is a major concern for halal customers. There have also been more recent reports that banned mechanically separated meat is being used in the UK to count towards meat content. Only last weekend, questions were raised about the reliability and accuracy of meat dish labelling in restaurants.

Although many of the cases are about mislabelling, there are also public health concerns. George Fairgrieve, the food safety adviser at the Royal Environmental Health Institute of Scotland, recently said:

“A worrying impact of the reduction in the number of inspections being carried out is that the opportunity for fraudulent activity increases and law-abiding traders are disadvantaged .... There are other vital areas of public health that must also be considered, for example preventing or dealing with outbreaks of E-coli O157 and Legionella.”

The latest revelations show once again that it is the average customer who is being let down.

The FSA Scotland’s consultation launch last week was welcome. We must take that as an opportunity to review what is working and what needs to be improved.