This week marks one year on from the discovery of horsemeat sold as beef products in British supermarkets. Despite the media storm and public outrage at the scale of the horsemeat adulteration, significant questions remain about how we produce our food and protect consumer interests. Twelve months on no charges have been brought against the perpetrators and new research by Which? shows further cuts in the number of food checks being carried out. The horsemeat scandal was food fraud on a major scale. The complexity of modern supply chains, the drive to cut ‘red tape’ and to reduce costs created the conditions for criminality to exploit. The result was a food scandal that shook 2013 and can still be felt today.

My overriding memory of the scandal was the lack of transparency and a consumer voice at the core of the government’s response. While the public were angry that some of our biggest retailers had been selling beef products containing horsemeat, the government presided over a confused response unable to get to the nub of consumer concerns. People should be confident that what they buy is properly labelled, legal and safe. The horsemeat scandal put the spotlight on a fragmented, complicated food system. As subsequent reports have agreed, our food protection regime was not adept enough to respond to this kind of challenge.

Labour should speak up as the champion of consumers. We need a renewed approach to food protection that puts consumers at its core and encourages shorter, more transparent supply chains. British farmers will benefit from a more transparent system that the public can trust. Shorter supply chains, fair negotiations with big retailers and intermediates must be part of the answer ensuring that farmers get paid a fair amount for the food they produce.

For a start, Labour should reverse the short-sighted break-up of food regulations introduced by the incoming government in 2010. One of the first acts of the government was to split responsibilities for food inspections, creating a more complicated system for food regulation. The Department of Health remained the sponsoring body for the Food Standards Agency. The FSA retained responsibility for food safety issues and meat inspections. But food labelling and composition were transferred to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Following me? No, few others were as well.

Second, we must stop seeing every regulation as ‘red tape’. When it comes to the safety and legality of the food we eat, rules are important. Although there was no smoking gun moment in the horsemeat scandal, the government made it harder to detect food fraud. The FSA budget for the meat hygiene service was cut by £12m over the four-year period from 2010. Trading standards officers – the frontline inspectors – who oversee local food checks were decimated by cuts to council grants. A National Audit Office report stated that funding go down from £213m in 2010 to £140m in 2014.

The scale of the cuts to councils and food budgets raised important questions over how these services are able to respond to increasingly complex potential for fraud and criminality. Trading standards officer snow have more responsibilities but with less money to meet them. A Which? investigation in January 2014 showed that overall food testing fell by 6.8 per cent in the last year, and testing for labelling and presentation fell by 16.2 per cent.

Chris Elliott’s official report into the scandal also called for a new specialist food crime unit to fight such large-scale fraud and criminal behaviour. Labour should seriously consider this proposal as part of a revamped FSA, bringing together the policy and investigatory powers necessary to oversee our food system. The lesson from the horsemeat scandal is that we need better, more effective oversight.

The UK is part of a global food supply chain. This inevitably creates complex relationships between growers, producers, suppliers, retailers and shoppers. In this sophisticated environment we need an independent watchdog putting consumer interests first and the powers to investigate and uphold standards.

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Andrew Pakes is a former adviser to the Labour party on environmental issues and food policy, and is now the Labour and Cooperative parliamentary candidate for Milton Keynes South. He tweets @andrew4mk

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Photo: Kate Boydell