As I write this, retailers and meat processors are meeting the Food Standards Agency and Defra to discuss the latest developments in the ongoing meat mislabelling/DNA traces saga.
The meeting comes after traces of pork were found in meat products labelled halal and supplied to prisons, and has received plenty of attention in the media.
The way the meeting has been portrayed in those media reports is rather similar: “The FSA orders major food retailers and suppliers to an urgent meeting after the latest food foul-up – pork being found in halal prison food,” is a fairly representative example. In fact, that’s pretty much how I characterised it in one of my own articles for thegrocer.co.uk this morning.
I have since amended that article, and here’s why: there are some curiously mixed messages about how and when this meeting came about.
The FSA assures me it called the meeting specifically in response to the halal issue that emerged on Friday (a version of events reflected in a press release it issued and also backed by Defra). However, the British Retail Consortium says the meeting was on the cards long before Friday and was, in fact, requested by the BRC. “The meeting was arranged last week after we asked the FSA to convene it a fortnight ago,” a BRC press officer tells me. “The meeting was arranged before the halal issue and is to deal with separation of meats in processing plants, not contamination.” One of my sources from the processing sector is also under the impression the meeting – although arranged on Friday – had been on the cards before, and independent of, Friday’s halal revelations.
Going on about who called the meeting when and precisely for what reason may seem like splitting hairs; after all, what matters is that a meeting is taking place today, and the halal issue is clearly going to be part of the agenda.
But in a crisis, language and communication also matter, and therefore so do the different messages from the FSA and the BRC on today’s meeting. Depending on which version of events is correct, we’re either dealing with a meat supply chain being called in for a serious ticking off from an exasperated regulator, or a proactive industry seeking to discuss the issues with the FSA off its own back. Or to put it another way: we’re either dealing with a nimble and responsive regulator that calls urgent meetings in the face of industry wrongdoing, or a regulator that merely seeks to portray itself in that way.
Given this crisis is about restoring trust in the meat industry, its practices and its regulatory oversight, I’d quite like to know exactly which of these options we’re dealing with. Wouldn’t you?
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