bert ] wrote
Rod Speed wrote
wrote
Dave Liquorice wrote

What I find rather disturbing is that no one in the whole long supply
chain, from abattoir to retail outlet, appears to have been routinely
testing that a batch of meat or product called "beef" really is 100%
beef.

PCR assays for horse could be made cheap enough for
widespread surveillance, but it's not really the right approach.

It is when you want to rub the supplier's noses in the fact that
whatever they try fraud wise will get caught very quickly.

If you have to figure out after the fact what animal it came
from, you really don't know enough about the suppliers.

That last just isnt feasible with an EU wide system.

Its never going to be feasible to have your own staff
permanently inside all your suppliers EU wide and
even that wont work because they can be bribed etc.

What's the next yucky thing going to be
that we then have to check all meat for?

Animals getting killed outside inspected abattoirs etc.

You cannot inspect absolute quality into a system.

Depends entirely on what you mean by absolute quality.

You can certainly ensure that the animals are only ever killed
in the abattoir and no dead animal ever shows up there, say
from the truck that they show up in etc or having died in the field.

And if you mean a perfect food product, nothing will guarantee
that, even total end to end control over everything involved at all.

That depends on the integrity of everyone involved in the task.

No it doesn't with some stuff like whether no animal that has
died outside the abattoir never ends up in the output of the abattoir.

That is not going to happen anywhere

Yes, its not even possible.

so when you do catch anyone out you have to come down on them HARD - to
deter les autres.

But it isnt always possible to work out who come
down on HARD. You cant just execute everyone
involved in the entire chain, or ensure that they
can never work in the industry ever again either.

And there will always be some prepared to risk
it even when you do come down HARD on any you
catch. Drug trafficking is a classic example of that.