It’s easy to have a pop at the food and drink industry and sometimes the criticism is deserved. But thanks to the level of reformulation over the past few years, legitimate targets are becoming fewer and further between.

As a result, instead of heavyweight ‘exposés’ you get puerile ‘shock docs’ of the sort fronted by ‘comedian’ Alex Riley, who resorted to picking on economy burgers in Britain’s Really Disgusting Foods last year in the absence of anything more meaningful to attack.

I’m worried a similar fate awaits fish fingers. As we reveal this week, the makers of the C4 documentary Dispatches seem to have got it into their heads that fish fingers are the new Turkey Twizzlers and are quizzing the fish industry on the contents of its value fingers.

Note the word value. The clear inference is they don’t see much mileage in scrutinising standard or premium offerings. Fortunately, even with the value focus, the industry is confident Dispatches won’t find anything, ahem, fishy. Let’s hope that’s the case and that Dispatches DOES let the facts get in the way of a good story.

Talking of good stories, the cloning saga continues to grab headlines and understandably so. Yes, The Daily Wail has ramped the story up to within an inch of its life and no, there is probably no danger to people’s health.

But as we report on pages here and here, the meat should never have entered the food chain Lord Rooker was warned of the potential danger two years ago and Defra did nothing, preferring instead to rely on an ineffectual system that was open to abuse (probably inadvertent).

Clones aren’t the only scary thing in this week’s issue. In our cover story The Living Dead we investigate the extent of the pensions crisis in the grocery industry and ask which companies are shuffling towards pension zombie status. With the threat of double-dip recession looming large, it’s a horror story that makes for decidedly uncomfortable reading.