The final report into the integrity and authenticity of UK food supply chain has been published today.
It makes a number of recommendations to government about how to ensure consumers can be fully confident about the quality of their food.

Following last year’s horse meat incident, Professor Chris Elliott was asked by the Secretaries of State for Defra and the Department of Health to lead a review into the integrity and assurance of food supply networks and to make recommendations on what could be done to protect UK consumers from food fraud.

Professor Elliott said:
"The UK has one of the safest food supply systems in the world, and all those involved should be commended for what has been achieved. I am pleased that the Government and the food industry have already taken some major steps forward in response to the interim report’s recommendations aimed at restoring consumer confidence and protecting hardworking honest businesses from food crime.
"I believe the creation of the national food crime prevention framework will ensure measures are put in place to further help protect consumers from any food fraud incidents in the future.”
The final report provides the rationale and evidence for 8 overarching recommendations to improve the integrity and assurance of food supply networks. These include:
• Putting the consumers first by ensuring that the needs of consumers in relation to food safety and food crime prevention are the top priority.
• Creating a robust, effective Food Crime Unit to protect our food industry and consumers from criminal activity, and support better links with food crime agencies across the EU and beyond;

• A zero tolerance approach to food fraud by improving intelligence gathering and sharing to make it difficult for criminals to operate;
• Introducing new unannounced audit checks by the food industry to protect businesses and their customers;
• Supporting the development of whistleblowing and reporting of food crime;
• Improving laboratory testing capacity and capability to ensure a standardised approach for testing for food authenticity; and;
• Encouraging the food industry to question the source of their supply chain.



The full review can be found here https://www.gov.uk/government/publications