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Continual improvement within management systems is essential to ensure the continued relevance of implemented systems and to mitigate stagnant and ineffective systems. South African abattoir managers utilise a regulated food safety system called the hygiene management system (HMS) to manage the safe processing of meat. The extent to which the HMS supports continual improvement is not clear as there is no specific requirement to demonstrate continual improvement within implemented systems. The aim of this paper is to provide this clarification by developing a framework of compliance criteria for continual improvement (CI) benchmarking the ISO 9000 series.

This study attempted to provide this clarification by developing a framework of compliance criteria for continual improvement (CI) benchmarking the ISO 9000 series. Thereafter the HMS requirements were assessed against these criteria to determine whether or not any gaps existed within the HMS requirements in support of continual improvement. This study adopted a qualitative approach where a review of standards formed the basis of the study.

This study demonstrates that the HMS is designed to support process stability. Further, the HMS requirements are sufficient to facilitate management of meat safety at abattoirs. However there are important gaps within the HMS in support of prevention as a means of continual improvement. The author postulates likely consequences of such gaps during implementation and management of the HMS.

This study emphasises the importance of fundamental principles in quality management underpinning basic improvement mechanisms of corrective and preventative action towards improvement. It also provides a basis for further empirical research into the extent to which improvement is made within implemented HMSs at abattoirs.

The Hygiene Management System (HMS) is a regulated basic food safety system applicable to registered South African abattoirs. There is however, no specific requirement within the HMS that specifies continual improvement (CI). Continual improvement within management systems is critical to ensure that these systems remain relevant, efficient and effective over time. The purpose of this research is to determine the extent to which the HMS requirements facilitate CI and to suggest, if necessary, an approach on how the concept may be realized in practice.

This study was conducted in two parts. The first part of the study developed continual improvement criteria benchmarking the ISO 9000 series. These criteria were then compared against the HMS requirements to determine the theoretical extent to which the HMS supports continual improvement. The second part of the study empirically tested the existing requirements of the HMS that support continual improvement.

This research demonstrates that the HMS is, first designed to support CI to a limited extent and second is not, in practice, implemented towards CI.

This paper presents regulators with gaps that exist within the present regulated HMS requirements in support of CI. It also provides abattoir managers with broad guidelines on how their implemented HMS can be designed towards CI. The research results may foster improvement within the regulated requirements of the HMS and implementation thereof towards improved handling and processing of safe meat at South African abattoirs.

This study aims to explore the impacts of long-term trends in the closure of abattoir businesses in the UK on the robustness of the network of abattoirs which provides private kill services.

This proof-of-concept study uses responses from a farmer and an abattoir survey in a spatial analysis to help visualise the private kill network. Monte Carlo simulation is used to estimate the impacts of possible further closures of private kill abattoirs on the robustness of the private kill network.

In August 2020, 18% of the area of the UK was more than 45 km from a private kill abattoir, 21% was serviced by one, 14% by two and 47% by three or more abattoirs. After randomly removing 9 and 18% of private kill abattoirs, to reflect the current trend in the closure of private kill abattoirs, the area of the UK more than 45 km from a private kill service and the areas with one and two providers increased, whilst the area with three or more providers decreased for each scenario. This approach, therefore, can be used to quantify the network's resilience to further closures.

The additional information that would be needed to allow this approach to help policymakers identify strategically valuable abattoir businesses is discussed.

No other national or international study has attempted to quantify the robustness of the network of private kill abattoirs.

Hazard analysis critical control point (HACCP) systems facilitate a preventative and systematic approach to control food safety hazards through critical control points (CCPs). Hazards are prevented, eliminated or reduced to acceptable levels. The regulated South African abattoir hygiene management system (HMS) has adopted HACCP principles. Control points (CPs) represent the central feature of control within the HMS. However, there are no guidelines to conduct hazard analysis within the HMS. There is also no guideline to identify CPs. The purpose of this paper is to present a hazard analysis methodology that may be used at South African abattoirs to overcome these shortcomings.

A review of SANS 10330:2007 (HACCP) and the regulated HMS standards was undertaken. A generic HACCP plan was developed for a hypothetical bovine processing abattoir. A proposed hazard analysis methodology was used to analyse generic hazards to determine its significance. Thereafter, CCPs were identified using the CCP decision tree. This was done to enable meaningful comparison between HACCP-based CCPs and HMS-based CPs. The hazard analysis methodology suggested by the Codex Alimentarius Commission (CAC) namely, the two dimensional health risk assessment model used to assess the significance of food safety hazards was used as a benchmark.

The management of CPs in a HMS plan is similar to control contemplated in a HACCP plan. It was found that regulated CPs are not specifically stated as CPs, they need to be identified. Also, not all regulated CPs addressed the significant hazards that were identified using the proposed methodology in this paper. Managing only regulated CPs in the HMS plan may likely offer limited control over hazards. Therefore, hazards analysis is important to identify significant hazards and in turn, CPs that provide more comprehensive control within the HMS in addition to exercising control using only regulated CPs. It was observed that there are no decision criteria available to identify CPs, unlike HACCP. It was proposed that because CPs are defined similar to CCPs, that the CCP decision tree be used to identify CPs.

A hazard analysis methodology was proposed to develop the HMS as well as steps towards its development. A decision guideline was also presented to facilitate extracting CPs from regulations. Important definitions lacking in regulations, and relating to the HMS, have also been proposed in this paper. More robust HMSs may be developed by identifying regulated CPs as well as identifying them through hazard analysis.

The contemporary rustler is a shrewd businessman, or rogue farmer exploiting food supply chain anomalies. Indeed, the first conviction in the UK for 20 years was a farmer stealing from neighbouring farmers. The theft of sheep in the UK is an expanding criminal enterprise which remains under researched. The purpose of this paper is to examine what is known of the illegal trade and its links to food fraud from a supply chain perspective with an emphasis on food integrity issues.

There is a dearth of current viable literature on livestock theft in a western context making it necessary to turn to socio-historical research and to official documents such as those published by the NFU and other insurance companies to build up a picture of this illegal practice. This is supplemented by documentary research of articles published in the UK press.

From this raw data a typology of rustlers is developed. The findings point to insider “supply chain” knowledge being a key facet in the theft of livestock. Other examples in the typology relate to urban thieves wrestling live sheep into a car and to industry insiders associated with the abattoir sector.

The obvious limitations is that as yet there are few detected cases of rustling in the UK so the developing typology of rustlers is sketchy. Another limitation is that much of the evidence upon which the typology is developed is anecdotal.

The typology should prove helpful to academics, insurance companies, investigators, industry insiders and farmers to help them understand this contemporary crime and how to prevent its spread. It also sheds light on food integrity in relation to the purchase and consumption of the end product in that customers expect to be purchasing legally and ethically reared animal products.

Food supply chain theory and practice generally assumes that the business practices and processes involved are ethical, legal and value-adding when this is not always so, as demonstrated by the ongoing 2013 horse-meat scandal. Although it is ostensibly a UK-based affair, it encompasses the meat processing industry across Europe. This study, thus, aims to examine supply chain criminality and to highlight “scandal scripts” which amplify underlying issues.

A systematic review of extant literature on the scandal adds to that body of work, updating the existing narrative to include a detailed analysis of convicted “industry insiders”, highlighting supply chain issues involved in the frauds. Micro-stories of businessmen involved are presented to enable an empirical exploration of their illegal involvement in the meat trade. Using storied data from accounts of the scandal as contemporary examples, emerging themes and issues are outlined through a mixed methods qualitative approach consisting of ethical covert research, using documentary research strategy underpinned by narrative inquiry.

Media coverage perpetuated various myths notably that the fraud was carried out by “shadowy”, Eastern European “mafia figures” exploiting the extended food supply chains. The analysis is aided by the use of media hypothesis. Far from being a mafia-inspired fraud, the criminal activity was organised in nature and committed by insider businessmen. The findings demonstrate that supply chains are complex and require an understanding of storied business practices, including the ethical and illegal.

From an academic perspective, there are implications such as the dearth of academic research and policy-related studies into food fraud possibly because of the difficulty in obtaining data because of access to such enterprises and entrepreneurs necessitating reliance upon documentary sources and investigative journalism.

There are distinct policy implications, particularly the need to legislate against international criminal conspiracies and everyday ordinary organised food frauds perpetuated. Lax penalties do little to prevent such crimes which need to be taken more seriously by the authorities, and treated as major crime. In formulating food laws, rules and regulations, greater cognisance should be taken to consider how supply chains in the food industry could be better protected from predatory criminal actions.

This novel qualitative study will enable academics and practitioners to better understand illegal enterprise, food fraud and risk management from both operational and supply chain perspectives and will be useful to investigators by furthering our understanding of entrepreneurial practice and morality in the food industry.

At the passing of the Fair Trading Act, 1973, and the setting up of a Consumer Protection Service with an Office of Fair Trading under a Director‐General, few could have visualized this comprehensive machinery devised to protect the mainly economic interests of consumers could be used to further the efforts of local enforcement officers and authorities in the field of purity and quality control of food and of food hygiene in particular. This, however, is precisely the effect of a recent initiative under Sect. 34 of the Act, reported elsewhere in the BFJ, taken by the Director‐General in securing from a company operating a large group of restaurants a written undertaking, as prescribed by the Section, that it would improve its standards of hygiene; the company had ten convictions for hygiene contraventions over a period of six years.

This Food Standards Committee Report has been with us long enough to have received careful appraisal at the hand of the most interested parties — food law enforcement agencies and the meat trade. The purposes of the review was to consider the need for specific controls over the composition and descriptive labelling of minced meat products, but the main factor was the fat content, particularly the maximum suggested by the Associaton of Public Analysts, viz., a one‐quarter (25%) of the total product. For some years now, the courts have been asked to accept 25% fat as the maximum, based on a series of national surveys; above that level, the product was to be considered as not of the substance or quality demanded by the purchaser; a contention which has been upheld on appeal to the Divisional Court.

A highly significant action taken by the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, reported elsewhere in this issue, could well result in important advances in surveillance and probably legislative control over enforcement of certain aspects of EEC legislation in the Member‐states. The Minister has sent an urgent request to the Commission in Brussels to dispatch inspectors to each country, including the United Kingdom, to examine and report on the standards of inspection and hygiene with detailed information on how the EEC Directive on Poultry Meat is being implemented. Information of the method of financing the cost of poultrymeat inspection in each country has ben requested. The comprehensive survey is seen as a common approach in this one field. The Minister requested that the results of the inspectors' reports should be available to him and other Member‐states.

Much to the relief of everyone, the general election has come and gone and with it the boring television drivel; the result a foregone conclusion. The Labour/Trade Union movement with a severe beating, the worst for half a century, a disaster they have certainly been asking for. Taking a line from the backwoods wisdom of Abraham Lincoln — “You can't fool all the people all the time!” Now, all that most people desire is not to live easy — life is never that and by the nature of things, it cannot be — but to have a reasonably settled, peaceful existence, to work out what they would consider to be their destiny; to be spared the attentions of the planners, the plotters, provocateurs, down to the wilful spoilers and wreckers. They have a right to expect Government protection. We cannot help recalling the memory of a brilliant Saturday, but one of the darkest days of the War, when the earth beneath our feet trembled at the destructive might of fleets of massive bombers overhead, the small silvery Messerschmits weaving above them. Believing all to be lost, we heaped curses on successive Governments which had wrangled over rearmament, especially the “Butter before Guns” brigade, who at the word conscription almost had apoplexy, and left its people exposed to destruction. Now, as then, the question is “Have they learned anything?” With all the countless millions Government costs, its people have the right to claim something for their money, not the least of which is the right to industrial and domestic peace.