100% food safety remains an illusion

Producers, retailers and scientists are telling the consumer that "food has never been better". Yet, confronted with food crises, diseases associated with food, and numerous scandals, consumer confidence in food safety has suffered tremendously in the last few years. Is this perception of "unsafety" justified?
Elsevier Food International, Vol. 6, Number 1, February 2003
Vincent Hentzepeter

It is a nightmare scenario for any A-brand producer to lose a dominant position on the market after a cascade of food scandals. This happened in Japan to premier dairy foods company Snow Brand Foods. It all began in 2000 when over 15,000 people in Osaka suffered symptoms of food poisoning after consuming dairy products made by the producer, causing an epidemic said to be the worst of its kind in 30 years of Japanese history. The problem was traced back to bacteria in one low-fat milk processing plant. However, soon afterwards it turned out that hygiene standards in other production locations had also been severely violated. A massive recall of dairy products and butter followed. An expensive PR-campaign had to revamp the cracked image.
However, just as the company was getting back on its feet again, another scandal caused the company's poor track record to reach an astonishing "climax". In March 2002, Hideki Takenouchi, the company's managing director, admitted openly before television cameras that Snow Brand Food had fiddled the expiry dates on 760 tonnes of butter and mislabelled Australian beef by repackaging it as Japanese produce and consequently claiming government compensation. It came as a major shock to the Japanese consumer.

Total lack of confidence
The Snow brand scandal together with BSE and antibiotics in meat have caused Japanese consumers to have lost all confidence in food safety. Last summer 84 per cent of the population said they are highly sceptical about this issue and 98 per cent of consumers believed that multiple cases of fraud with food labelling and illegitimate use of food additives were yet to be discovered. Japanese politicians, producers and retailers will have a hard job to turn the tide as consumers increasingly tend to purchase food product directly from the farm and have turned their backs on A-brands that received bad publicity.

Insufficient control
Despite reassuring words from producers, retailers and scientists such as "food has never been better", many consumers feel and think differently and consider food scandals to be an increasing phenomenon.
Is this perception of "unsafety" justified? Producers obviously disagree. They refer to the fact that control over the food chain has been intensified enormously over the last few years. True, safety protocols have improved dramatically. Certified production systems, strict quality control programmes, sanitary processing conditions, elaborate laboratory testing, HACCP, intelligent tracking and tracing etc. have certainly contributed to a lower incidence of recalls and food safety problems.
However, this is only part of the story. Through the years, food production has become an increasingly large scale, cross-border operation, making watertight control increasingly difficult. An example is last year's MPA-crisis when the banned MPA hormone found its way into pig feed at thousands of farms, mainly in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany. The source of MPA contamination was traced to wastewater from a pharmaceutical factory that, through the now-bankrupt Belgian reprocessing plant Bioland, provided glucose syrup as raw material to Dutch feed manufacturers. Shortly afterwards, it was found that the soft drinks sector had also been using the same syrup. The MPA-case clearly shows how food safety problems can easily get out of hand and affect multiple sectors of the food branch.

Organic market scandal
Consumers who distrust the food and meat industry increasingly change over to organic retail channels. However, even the organic sector was recently subject to a major crisis. In Germany, reports were published in May 2002 that about 550 tonnes of organic wheat in Germany had been contaminated by the pesticide Nitrofen. The weed killer, linked to cancer and banned in Europe since 1988, contaminated organic chickens that had been fed grain that had been stored in a former herbicide warehouse in former East Germany.
A September 2002 study conducted by Organic Monitor about the "the German Market for Organic Meat Products", showed that organic meat sales dwindled and consumer demand for organic poultry collapsed during the peak of the scandal. Although consumer confidence in organic foods did eventually return, some supermarkets withdrew organic meat products indefinitely.
Increased knowledge also increases problems. One of the problems when implementing a food safety charm offensive is that consumers become immune to soothing words. The perception of lack of safety also remains because advanced testing techniques continuously shed new light on food safety issues that were unknown before. Thus confronting the public time after time with bad news.
A good example of this is the rising concern about acrylamide, a carcinogenic compound, found in deep-fried potato products but also in roasted products like coffee. Before autumn 2002, nobody had ever heard about this problem, although it has always existed.

Lessons learned?
Of course, adequate crisis management is a precondition to minimise the adverse effects of any food scandal. A great deal can be learned from the BSE crisis in the UK, not only in terms of food safety, but also in terms of managing communication. Crucial information was withheld and safety signals were sent out prematurely, badly affecting consumer confidence in both the government and the meat industry. Beef consumption plummeted and it took until 2000 before rates were back at the 1996 pre-crisis level. And just as the UK was recovering, a severe beef crisis hit European countries. Although of no epidemic scale, the first Mad Cow case in Germany caused a 50 per cent drop in beef consumption. Beef sales dropped by 25 per cent in France and 20 per cent in Belgium. As a food safety measure, an Ell-wide compulsory testing of all cattle over 30 months old for prionic disease was introduced.
However, things still went wrong. As what happened at Carrefour in October 2000, when batches of bovine meat were withdrawn from 39 stores. At first, this action seemed unnecessary. The meat originated from 11 healthy animals that had been part of a group of 12 of which the 12th animal tested suspect, but had immediately been excluded from the marketing circuit by the Veterinary Services. So why a recall? Carrefour explained this rigorous step as an act of utmost precaution. However, critics looked upon it as proof that the retailer's tracking and tracing system was not 100 per cent watertight. Regardless of who was right, for the consumer it proved again that beef could not be trusted.
In a next large recall case, Carrefour certainly did better. In a joint project with Coca-Cola and EAN the retailer demonstrated that it could successfully track down defect soft drinks bottles and remove these from the shelves within six hours. Using the Serial Shipping Codes on the pallets in addition to EAN-standards only two instead of 14 distribution centres had to return their products, thus involving only 14 instead of 177 stores in the recall. This kind of fast transparent action with as little inconvenience as possible to the customers is the best way to restore consumer confidence whenever problems occur with food products.

Tracking & tracing
It is highly unlikely that advanced technological solutions, like intelligent tracking & tracing, will yield 100 per cent food safety. Yet, what they do provide is a better and faster understanding of what went wrong so that appropriate and prompter measures can be taken.
Initiatives like the new European Food Safety Agency and the FoodTracE project, which aim at full traceability in the food supply chains, should be welcomed. Nevertheless, it is a fact that 100 per cent food safety remains an illusion.