As the horsemeat crisis slows to a trot in the UK, an industry group has called on supermarkets to act to increase transparency and shorten supply chains, blaming greed and short-sighted tactics for the failings and lack of transparency the crisis has revealed in the food industry.

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The calls came as the UK Food Standards Authority announced that its meat authenticity testing regime will be expanded this week to cover a wider range of products. In all, 514 products will be tested. Meanwhile, investigations into several companies in England and Wales continued, with raids taking place earlier this week on premises in London and Hull.  

The National beef Association said on Tuesday (19th February) that "a disappointed British public [is] paying the price for the short sighted, price-led, purchasing tactics mistakenly deployed by frontline retail buyers for decades."

The Association's director Chris Mallon claimed supermarkets had "adopted a bullying culture aimed exclusively at securing as much farm food as possible, for as little cost as possible." He added, "The result is tortured supply chains that add so much unnecessary cost [and] short cuts on quality and traceability."

Farm industry groups have been particularly exacerbated by the scandal, as they claim their hard work and compliance with regulations has been undermined by unscrupulous players in long, convoluted supply chains, and that the public image of livestock keepers will suffer as a result. Some industry groups have sought to capitalise on the upheaval by promoting the nebulous concept of 'British farming', though raids on British abattoirs and the fact that only horsemeat from Britain has so far been contaminated with 'bute' have complicated matters.

Nevertheless, local butchers and farm shops, which operate shorter, more direct supply chains have benefitted from huge increases in custom since the crisis broke, suggesting consumers are willing to support farmers and retailers who they perceive as more traditional and 'trustworthy'. A recent opinion poll by Consumer intelligence showed that many consumers questioned would opt to buy better meat less often, and those who could afford it would buy less processed meat as a result of the scandal.

Even so, supermarket chains in the UK account for 90 percent of grocery sales and as such wield immense power over their suppliers.

NBA director Chris Mallon added on Tuesday, "[Supermarkets'] misguided tactics have to be quickly reversed if further collapse in consumer confidence in the UK's food supply chains is to be avoided. This can only be done if a real and permanent effort is made to correct decades of misapplied endeavour and a new approach to food purchasing is adopted." He recommended meat buyers focus on establishing dedicated local supply chains, making sure that all participants in the supply chain are able to adequately cover their costs and eliminating the "profit taking, middlemen" who add cost while often reducing traceability.

Earlier in the month, Professor Karel Williams of Manchester Business School told Farming Online that the horsemeat fiasco, or one like it, was an inevitability given the state of the current food system. He said a study from the Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change shows that less cavalier approaches to producing affordable food are available, including that used by Morrisons, which owns its own processing plants, but that these are rejected by most major supermarkets, which exist as "buyer led organisations" and are not responsible for producing the goods they sell. 

He explained, "The [horsemeat scare] is what academics call a 'normal accident'; inevitable sooner or later because it is inherent in system design. And it is unnecessary because we can have tight control of a short chain and no accidents if the industry adopts the Morrisons model of vertical integration. It's time to change supermarket business models and to take action for food security before we lose what's left of UK food production and processing."

Mallon agreed, adding, "In the red meat sector more supermarkets must adopt the Morrison's model and bring processing in-house or else organise deliveries from an exclusive, single site, supplier like Waitrose."

He went on to demand retailers "show the British public that the continued racking down of food prices will ultimately make it more difficult to secure enough good food from trusted sources," adding that "Concentrating on cheapness is myopic… The on-going horsemeat scandal has demonstrated conclusively that consumers only get what they pay for and that continued price reduction will jeopardise food quality." However, this may prove challenging at a time when food insecurity in Britain is rising rapidly.