How many timebombs in our food chain?

Changes must be made to protect the livelihoods of thousands of communities; and also to protect consumers from the dangers of the mass food production process. As Joanna Blythman of the Daily mail argues here.

WE ARE paying the terrible price for our reliance on a heavily industrialised, over-centralised method of mass food production. The contamination of more than 400 products by Sudan 1, an illegal, cancer-promoting dye, shows how indifferent both retailers and suppliers have become towards food safety in their increasingly cut-throat bid for profits and market share.

Through the reckless and irresponsible misuse of Sudan 1, millions of people shopping at the local supermarket have been exposed to an unacceptable health risk.

Tragically, this is only the latest in a long series of health crises directly caused by intensive methods of production and distribution favoured by the supermarkets.

In 2002, for instance, several chains had to announce the withdrawal of prawns contaminated with nitrofurans (a veterinary medicine that fights bacterial infections, but banned in Europe because it can cause cancer in humans).

In 2003, the inadequacy of the big retailers' safety procedures was graphically highlighted by a case when four men from Denby Poultry were found guilty of selling meat which had been condemned as unfit for human consumption.

Denby's poultry had reached not only local takeways and institutional caterers but also Sainbury's, Asda, Waitrose and Kwiksave.

The Sudan 1 scare is perhaps the most serious of all these and is already estimated to be costing the food industry more than £100million because it affects an astonishing and growing range of products - from pizzas to steak and kidney pies.

The breadth of this disaster is a direct consequence of the ruthless stranglehold that the supermarkets have imposed on the British food chain since the 1980s.

Before then, because we had a much more diverse, localised food system based on smaller retailers and a much larger number of suppliers, any problem with a certain product - such as a poison bug or a toxic contaminant - could be contained much more easily.

Today, with a highly-mechanised streamlined operation covering the entire country and dominated by the big supermarkets, who control around 80% of the food supply in Britain, problems spread much more rapidly and extensively.

In the constant quest to squeeze down prices, the supermarkets have driven many of the smaller, local suppliers out of business.

So they come to rely on a few large firms - like Premier Foods, the company responsible for producing the Worcester Sauce contaminated with Sudan 1 - which massively increases the probability of poisoning on a nationwide scale.

{1}Moreover, the supermarkets force their suppliers to conduct the necessary food safety tests, and at their own expense. Again this leads to pressure to cut corners.

Despite supermarkets' frequent assurances that their safety standards are second to none, the reality is that all they require from their suppliers is a bureaucratic paper trail showing that the right tests have been carried out.

There is no real rigour, no sense of true responsibility for protecting the consumers' interests. It is telling that the chilli used as an ingredient in Premier Foods' batch of Worcester sauce containing the poison dye was three years old.

If the retailers really cared about safety, then why on earth were they relying on a supplier which could even contemplate using such dangerously old stock?

But sadly, such staleness is all too common in the modern British food industry. All too many chicken ready meals, for example, contain frozen chicken from Thailand which is at least 18 months old - because it is so cheap.

The truth is that it is impossible to promote healthy eating while at the same time producing endless cheap convenience meals for the public. Worcester sauce should be an unusual product to find on dishes like pizza and pies.

Yet it has been so widely used throughout the supermarket food chain is because today's processed food is so bland, so tasteless that it needs to be spiced up.

The complete absence of natural quality and taste has to be masked by the sauce - just as it is masked by industrial overuse of salt in so many mediocre supermarket goods. Both the Food Standards Agency and the supermarkets have issued soothing statements claiming that none of us are at any real risk of cancer as a result of this latest scare.

But given the dismal record of the food industry over recent years - as evidenced by continual problems such as salmonella, BSE and foot and mouth - we cannot be reassured.

Sudan 1 has been revealed as a timebomb at the heart of our food chain. How many more are out there that we do not yet know about?

? Joanna Blythman is author of Shopped - The Shocking Power of British Supermarkets.