Duncan McNair

The chairman of the McNair Report into the RSPCA's Freedom Food assured animal welfare scheme tells the respected industry publication about the findings of the independent inquiry and why the animal charity should implement the recommendations made. 

View farmer s weekly livestock systems need a rethink.pdf

Duncan McNair offers advice on bringing property claims in Cyprus following the introduction of limitation laws which sought to exclude all but the very timeliest of claims.

View property investor news deadline draws close for new cyprus limitation law.pdf

Following publication of the McNair Report, Chairman Duncan McNair expresses his support for the RSPCA, while underlining his belief that the animal welfare organisation should implement the findings of the report in order to uphold the health and wellbeing of the nation's animals within the food production industry.

View 326401653 the guardian rspca should implement my report now.pdf

In an overseas property investment article in The Times, Duncan explains how European Commission regulations can be used to assist property owners in Cyprus who were mis-sold mortgages.

View watch your tread with overseas property the times.pdf

The Government has utterly failed to bring accountability to the food industry, says Duncan McNair.

By Duncan McNair

6:50PM GMT 14 Jan 2014

This month marks the first anniversary of the horsemeat scandal in the UK. Those concerned for consumer safety and animal welfare alike were entitled to expect vigorous action. But the Government and food industry have yet to take effective action to stem the disastrous consequences of appallingly long and convoluted supply chains where all accountability is lost, featuring excessive animal suffering and rotting carcasses through to widespread adulteration of meat products delivered into supermarkets for consumption by millions. Urgent rehabilitation of our failing system of food production and distribution is the only way to restore consumer confidence in the food we eat.

A year on, the only ongoing action by government is the Elliott review. Commenting on the interim report last month, Owen Paterson, the Environment Secretary, claimed "there are good systems in place to ensure UK consumers have access to some of the safest food in the world" and that "the UK food industry already has robust procedures to ensure they deliver high quality food to consumers".

This endorsement sits uneasily with the litany of failures of our regulatory system in recent years, among them salmonella in eggs, then BSE, foot and mouth disease, unlawful antibiotics in meat and honey, chemical contaminants in fish, and now the horrors for both man and beast of the horsemeat fiasco with its daily new revelations. This recent history discloses a deep rooted, systemic failure borne of successive governments' failure to grapple effectively with fast-changing methods of food production. New and highly technical processes, the ever-burgeoning industrialisation and globalisation of food production and the changing balance of power in the food business all contribute to a situation which government at both national and EU levels has found impossible to control, and sometimes to understand. Few expect the crises to stop here.

DEFRA, charged with responsibility for the food supply chain and negotiating reform of food subsidy regimes, has fallen short. Its refusal to support the mandatory labelling of meat as to farming method, or labelling of all meat as to the country where the animal was born, cause disquiet. Anxieties also arise from its failure to resist mega-dairies, cloning of farm animals and lack of any progress in bringing live animal exports to an end – all issues where high levels of public concern are regularly expressed. The Food Standards Agency, founded in 2001 in acknowledgment of the need for an independent body to protect the consumers following various foodborne illnesses, despite its scientific expertise, has fared no better, demoralised by cutbacks and in 2010 the transfer away of key nutrition and food labelling policy responsibilities.

In the exercise of their food safety and hygiene responsibilities, local councils, stretched and depleted by the new austerity, have proved no match for the commercial might of the large vested interests, heavily resourced and bristling with lawyers. The existing structure is inadequate, its performance under stress woeful.

The Elliott review is directed to focus on "consumer confidence in the authenticity of all food products". Its proposal of a specialist food crime unit is certainly necessary, to tackle individual acts of fraud. But the danger is an overemphasis on effects rather than causes. Trust will not be restored without the key wider issues being rigorously investigated. Among these are scrutiny of absurdly long supply chains, the activities of food processing companies, the continuing entrenchment of power with the big retailers, the supermarkets’ and regulators’ ongoing failure to identify numerous instances of food adulteration, and lack of vigilance as to animal welfare in food production.

Last year I chaired an independent review commissioned by the RSPCA into Freedom Food, the leading farmed animal welfare assurance scheme. My panel included Caroline Spelman, the former Environment Secretary, and Professor David Main, a distinguished academic veterinarian. We took submissions from numerous parties concerned with the food industry. All interests and shades of opinion responded. The recommendations of the McNair Report inform my view that only a root and branch overhaul of the regulatory system will enable consumers to trust what they are told they are eating.

Openness and transparency between retailers and consumers as to farming methods are the key to restoring public confidence. Farmed animals outnumber domestic pets by 40 to 1. No wonder in a nation of animal lovers consumer concern for animal welfare has steadily risen. Authoritative research consistently links animal wellbeing to meat of a higher nutritional quality. New polling by Populus shows 77 per cent would have greater confidence in the food chain if standards for farmed animals improved.

In place of the FSA, a new and properly resourced body is needed committed to enhancing consumer safety and animal welfare in the food industry, focusing on transparency and accountability in the supply chain and intelligible labelling of animal products; with a wide remit to licence, regulate, discipline, investigate and prosecute and to recommend standards. It should stand independent of government and the various departments with which its brief overlaps, but engage with it at national and EC levels; publish reports of its activities and findings and make policy recommendations.

Public confidence in the integrity of food supply chains is seriously damaged. Rarely has the axiom been truer that trust must be earned. This will be achieved only by a new openness and by a revived political will to build a system that is fit for purpose.

Duncan McNair is a solicitor and was Chairman of the McNair Inquiry and Report