The professor tasked with making recommendations to the government in the wake of the horsemeat scandal, which sent shockwaves up and down the meat supply chain earlier this year, has recommended setting up a dedicated police unit to investigate and deal with similar food- related issues in the future.

Releasing his interim report on Thursday, Professor Chris Elliott, Director of the Institute for Global Food Security at Queen's University Belfast, identified weaknesses in the UK's supply chain networks and made a number of recommendations to the government.

The 'horsemeat scandal' first broke in the UK in January, when the joint Food Standards Agencies of UK and Ireland began investigating burgers manufactured in Northern and Southern Ireland for sale in a number of supermarkets which were labelled as being 100 percent beef, but were found to contain horsemeat. The investigation uncovered widespread mislabelling and criminality across Europe, including 'Halal' products found to contain traces of pigmeat, products labelled as beef containing 100 percent horsemeat and adulteration of foods (workers at one plant in the Netherlands told of how they were made to mix horsemeat with defrosted beef that was, in some cases, so old that it had turned green and they were forced to cover their faces to block out the smell.) It also sparked questions about traceability and the sustainability of the current food system and our attitude to food, particularly 'prestigious' products like beef.   

The scandal, which quickly became the largest and arguably most significant case of food fraud in the 21^st Century led to the closure of a number of companies, withdrawal of millions of processed meat products and helped independent retailers enjoy a surge in popularity, although a Europe-wide investigation has led to very few prosecutions.

Professor Elliott said criminal elements in the supply chain were responsible for the crisis and that criminals, attracted to the food industry by "the potential for huge profits and low risks", are currently operating in unknown numbers, their operations left relatively unchecked. However, at the time of the horsemeat crisis, Manchester Business School Professor karel Williams told Farming Online, "The official line is that horsemeat is not a food safety issue, we are the victims of mafia fraud and the supermarkets should test more. This is both naive and a distraction. The problem is long and constantly shifting adversarial supply chains, where processors are buying in on price and the delivery by 40 tonne chiller truck comes from somewhere different each week."

Food policy professor Tim Lang, also speaking in February, the reflex action of blaming criminal gangs for the contamination, was too "convenient". He said that, contrary to the "bad apple theory" of unscrupulous traders in other countries, evidence suggests that the scandal is the result of a "systemic failure, where some of the biggest, most powerful, highly capitalised and ruthless controlling companies in the food system have been found to be selling horsemeat" in violation of contracts. He added, "This isn't about safety, it's about trust… money, power and control; the Food Standards Agency inspectors have been slashed and cut. We can't have industry policing itself, that's what's gone wrong; the big food companies didn't actually have the power they said they had."     

Nevertheless, Elliott urged government and industry to work together and form 'intelligence hubs' to gather and share information on food fraud and related crimes. He called for a 'zero tolerance' policy for food fraud, to discourage "minor dishonesties" and punish major ones, including the formation of a dedicated Food Crime Unit, based on police units working in a number of Northern European countries.

Demanding "clear leadership and coordination of investigations and prosecutions," he suggested the new crime unit be administered by the FSA.

Commenting on the findings, Defra Secretary Owen Paterson said on Thursday, "The UK food industry already has robust procedures to ensure they deliver high quality food to consumers and food businesses have a legal duty to uphold the integrity of food they sell. It is rightly highly regarded across the world and we must not let anything undermine this or the confidence of consumers in the integrity of their food. We will continue to work closely with the food industry, enforcement agencies and across local and central Government to improve intelligence on food fraud and our response to it."

He said "Significant action" is already being taken to prevent and identify food crime, including unannounced inspections of meat cutting plants, which have increased in frequency since the scandal and food testing, which also increased in the wake of the horsemeat debacle.

A food Standards Agency spokesperson said "The need for a more coordinated and proactive approach to food crime is the principal theme of the report and Professor Elliott is right to highlight that there is a role for central government, local authorities and the food industry to play in this area. We know from the horse meat incident that food supply chains are complex and international. We support the European Commission in its work to establish a European Union food fraud unit, to which the FSA has seconded staff, so we are better able to protect consumers from fraud along the whole food chain across the whole of Europe."

Elliott's investigation was commissioned by Defra and the Department for Health. The full report will be published in Spring 2014.