Impossible to predict next food safety scandal
The food industry has no idea where the next food safety scandal will come from, according to Sainsbury’s head of quality, safety and supplier performance.
Alex Kyriakides told the Assuring the Integrity of the Food Chain conference in April that no amount of testing or inspections could guarantee that the next problem would be spotted.
“I have no idea what it will be, but there will be another one – and I don’t say that flippantly.”
He claimed that ploughing resources into testing for horsemeat was not helping the situation.
“So much resource is tied up on this issue [the horsemeat scandal] that it is very difficult to predict and manage what else might come through – and that applies to the whole industry.”
“I wouldn’t half like there to be some [systems] to find what I didn’t know I needed to look for. I’d pay a lot of money for that.”
Kyriakides added that, despite Sainsbury not having any horsemeat in its products, the scandal had been “effing horrendous”.