Product safety and integrity issues in Australian red meat: reports in international databases 2020

Summary

To identify both actual and potential food safety risk and fraud arising from the use of Australian red meat products in Australian and (potential) export markets, the MLA Food safety program has subscribed to the Food Forensics Newsletter, Fera HorizonScan, Descernis Horizon Scanning and Risk Plaza.

These reporting services for product integrity issues to provide warning of incidents around the world which need to be considered by the Market Access Science team in developing the research programme.

Objectives

The objective of this project was to summarise the risks and trends reported by Australia and other countries. This will provide information to assist meat businesses with VACCP (vulnerability assessment) and TACCP (threat assessment) development for the Food safety plan.

Key findings

From the data it can be concluded that meat is an attractive commodity for fraud, however Australia is of low risk due to its strict regulatory systems.

There was 1 case of adulteration/substitution and 1 of fraudulent documentation, however these cases did not show the Australian industry being the perpetrators.

It should be noted that the results are limited to known and published cases, therefore the true extent of fraud may be higher.

Benefits to industry

Although meat is an attractive item to fraudsters, for the Australian red meat industry, this report is reassuring because it demonstrates that our strict regulatory systems conforms to major exporting partners, evidenced by the lack of reported issues related to Australian red meat products. In addition, it also shows that Australia has very good hygiene standards.

MLA action

It is recommend that the subscription on risk reporting services should continue to ensure changes can be identified early and research and industry can respond.