Horseburger

The rumpus surrounding the burger contamination episode continues. Much of the noise is coming from people unhappy with the current state of affairs within the food surveillance authorities. But is this really the area to be attacking?

My first thought when all this arose was "Well, they're cheap burgers, what do you expect?". The profit motive is always likely to cause supermarkets to aim to drive down the cost of their goods, and to encourage producers to similarly minimise the cost of their ingredients and to maximise the efficiency of their processses (hence the delights of mechanically recovered meat etc.). In such a scenario someone, somewhere is going to try to cheat.

The reputational damage that supermarkets are likely to suffer when problems such as this are revealed should be sufficient for them to put in place good traceability procedures. How did Tesco fall down? Did they think that there was little risk of a problem being discovered, or did they just take a corporate eye off the ball?

Whatever, I suggest that the clamour for regulation goes too far. Sure, let's have spot checks to keep traders honest but I wouldn't want the question of getting "what it says on the tin" to distract from ensuring food safety which to my mind is where the authorities should be concentrating.

And if anyone is really concerned perhaps they should learn to cook with raw ingredients and not buy cheap, processed junk.