A missed opportunity - that’s what this week’s Food Inspectors was.

Horsegate and food fraud were on the menu, and Matt Allwright got stuck into the big questions: how did horse end up in our burgers, he asked - pointing at a horse in a field - and what’s the next food scandal waiting to happen?

Viewers were then treated to a whistle-stop tour of issues: meat supply chains were complex and therefore open to fraud, we were told, and Trading Standards had fewer and fewer resources to test food and ensure consumers weren’t being misled. Plus, the next food authenticity scandal is seemingly just around the corner, with a stern Professor Chris Elliott warning about the potential for fraud in fish.

Food fraud is a complex subject, and with a cast including Elliott, Anne McIntosh MP, Professor Tim Benton and an overworked Trading Standards officer from Gloucestershire, the programme did a decent job of setting out some of the key challenges (even if a lengthy consumer test on white fish verged on the very silly).

What was missing was a robust industry perspective. I understand industry is (sometimes rightly) reluctant to put its head above the parapet on these kinds of programmes, but having an actual person from an actual supermarket - instead of a disembodied voice from a written BRC statement - really would have made a difference here.

There was no sense of what retailers and suppliers do to ensure the food they produce and sell is authentic, or of the numerous tests, audits and inspections happening within the supply chain or the changes and improvements made.

With public food tests being cut and consumers unable to protect themselves, it all added up to a rather alarming message: “Perhaps it’s time the food industry stepped up to the plate,” Allwright concluded. Stepping up to the mike would be a start.