Glancing at a recent newsletter from the Association of Meat Suppliers (AIMS) made for interesting reading. Surprise, surprise, the Macdonald Task Force on better regulation, on which leading trade figures have pinned so much hope, has been summarily dismissed by the Food Standards Agency (FSA) Board.
Apparently, at a briefing the Board was given prior to a stakeholder meeting, FSA Chief Executive Tim Smith commenced by saying the industry is not ready to be trusted and the public health risks were too great.
I deduced very early in his tenure at the FSA that, in technical and scientific terms , Mr Smith hasn’t a clue what he is talking about. If, after all these years of endless papers, investigations and findings from so many eminent contributees, people such as Don Bennett, Patrick Wall, Peter Hewson and others, hasn’t sunk in; and if the knowledge of what the production of fresh meat in abattoirs actually involves in public health terms has not filtered through to the people we rely on to make sound judgements, then there is really no hope for many big abattoirs, and virtually none at all for the small to medium sector.
For Mr Smith not to be ridiculed and hauled over the coals for such a crass statement shows an unfortunate but significant lack of knowledge by those people who sit on the FSA Board.
Trade leaders huff and puff, but that’s about all.
Ministers might have some say in the matter, but so far FSA have been every bit as disdainful towards Government Ministers as they have the industry. Still, with a bloke like Jeff Rooker at the helm and the bolshy manner in which he conducts himself, no one should really be surprised.
Trust, and those other buzz-words, “consistently competent”, should be removed forthwith from any discussion with the authorities. Abattoir operators have to fulfill legal obligations, not satisfy some trumped-up ideology or judgement from an overactive careerist bureaucrat. AND THAT IS ALL. Years of reticence and generations of fear of authority has brought about an institutionalised mentality of capitulation in the trade. The FSA and its predecessors have brought the abattoir industry to its knees, and I do not believe that to be an overstatement.
Everybody knows that this issue is all about the money and the huge sums involved. That’s why seasoned hardliners such as Jeff Rooker and Tim Smith, tough as teak characters who probably don’t give a damn about what they know or don’t know about the subject, have been brought in to carry the FSA flag. Their bunker mentality must surely be confronted with an assault of a different kind from industry, of which plenty of suggestions have been put forward by this writer over many years.
If we don’t, they will win.
To succeed you have to try.
Toby Baker.