Consumer rights - We all need to be more assertive

It must be very disheartening for the great majority of food producers — from the smallest organic chicken farmer to the industrial-scale beef producer — to watch as efforts to win international consumers’ confidence are undone by the escalating horse-meat scandal.

The tens of thousands of innocent people employed in the sector must worry too that unwelcome, unaffordable ripples will reach their world because of the swindle.

Though first identified in Ireland, the meat fraud has taken on an international and criminal character that will unnerve many consumers already more than sceptical about the integrity of food provenance and labelling. That justified scepticism has been deepened by the almost universal perspective taken on the horse-meat scandal. Nearly all responses put commercial interests, be they meat producers, processors, retailers or catering interests, first. Consumers, if they are mentioned at all, are told that they have been swindled but not to worry about it because a bit of untraceable horse meat never did anyone any harm.