Ten representatives from food and drink manufacturers in Wales benefited from a pilot training exercise delivered by the National Food Crime Unit (NFCU) Prevention Team from the Food Standards Agency.
This pilot exercise took these businesses through an example of a food crime scenario, with guidance from the NFCU team throughout.
The pilot was designed by the NFCU to enable the food and drink manufacturers to understand the impact of food fraud and the process, communication channels, and responsibilities for the industry during a food fraud incident. The businesses worked together to analyse a food fraud scenario, and the response needed to mitigate the impact.
Ben Pye, Senior Prevention and Relationship Management Officer at the National Food Crime Unit, Food Standards Agency, led the session:
“We developed this pilot exercise based on industry recommendations to further support in preventing food crime and fraud incidents. This exercise provided a safe environment for food industry professionals to practice their response to potential food crimes and fraud-related challenges, whilst emphasising the importance of fraud prevention.”
The workshop was hosted by ZERO2FIVE Food Industry Centre at Cardiff Metropolitan University, who work with many food and drink manufacturing businesses through the Welsh Government funded Project HELIX.
Helen Taylor, Technical Director at ZERO2FIVE stated:
“The global food system is increasingly complex and challenging, and it is critical the industry implements effective mechanisms to develop fraud resilience, prevention and deterrence to maintain brand reputation and food safety. The completion of today’s exercise has been invaluable to the businesses who attended, enabling them to evaluate their capability to respond in an emergency to a food crime incident. We will collaborate and support the businesses to enhance their food security further and we will be planning to offer this opportunity to other businesses soon.”
The ten food and drink manufacturing representatives in attendance benefited from the experience of the session, taking away a greater understanding of food crime and fraud, how to prevent it, and how to deal with it, should they be impacted.
Jayne Griffiths, Food Safety Manager at Castell Howell Foods took part in this pilot session:
“This session was hugely informative and impactful. By working with others to go through a food crime scenario, we were able to learn from each other and identify key areas for improvement and food fraud prevention in each of our businesses. I will be taking this insight back to the business and ideally would like to replicate this session with the wider teams, as there are many roles involved in preventing and responding to food fraud incidents.”
Jill Christopher, Site Technical Controller, Halo Foods:
“This was an incredibly helpful session. Working through the scenario has helped me to better understand food crime and fraud prevention, including the various stages of investigation and ultimate closure. I will be going back into the business with an increasing focus of ensuring we are fully resilient to these types of threats.”
This session was the first of its kind in England and Wales and ZERO2FIVE Food Industry Centre will be working with the Food Standards Agency, to help them to roll out across food and drink manufacturers in Wales.
