TGWU at the service of the food industry

By Jean Shaoul

September's conference organised by the Transport and General Workers Union on food safety might as well have been commissioned by the food industry. It was conceived as a means of restoring public confidence, rescuing the food industry and restoring its sales and profitability.

In relation to food safety, the TGWU's line is indistinguishable from the industry's: personal hygiene is the problem, not the corner cutting in the drive for profits.

The conference was advertised as an opportunity for food hygiene specialists to make an input into policy and make recommendations to the government. It was clearly aimed at agri-business, not consumer interests. The admission fee was £700, excluding accommodation with the reduced rate for academics still extortionate at £300.

The 250 participants were mainly from food and related industries, the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, professional bodies and union officials. Some of the chief culprits in the recent food epidemics, the Meat Hygiene Service and the State Veterinary Service, were conspicuous by their absence. There were various trade displays, with pride of place given to the Meat and Livestock Commission, the meat industry's advertising agency, who provided the meals!

The TGWU's aim was to bring everyone behind Labour's proposals for a new Food Standards Agency. In the aftermath of the BSE/nvCJD and E-coli 0157 epidemics, the Conservative government had reluctantly agreed to a Food Agency as a sop to public opinion. Before the election Labour responded by commissioning a hurried report from Professor James of the Rowett Institute, on what its functions should be and how it should operate.

The TGWU invited Professor James to explain his recommendations and organised a platform of speakers who could be relied on to not rock the boat. A question and answer session was held after each speech, followed by a call for a vote of support for the James Report. This report is not about food safety, but consumer confidence as it says explicitly in its opening paragraph. It states that while a Food Standards Agency would take about three years to have an impact on consumer confidence, any improvement in public health would take longer.

Vital questions avoided

All the speakers avoided the vital questions; the incessant cost cutting in the drive for profits which make it impossible to prepare, transport and store food safely; the fact that food policy is determined by advisory committees made up of the industry and scientists sponsored by the industry, who then design the voluntary Codes of Practice; deregulation; that regulations are determined by the cost to the industry; and the lack of resources to enforce such regulations, etc. The latter was never mentioned even by the professional body whose members had to enforce the regulations.

The TGWU gave a platform to the Chief Executive of Northern Foods (one of the Labour government's main backers), Tesco's, the Meat and Livestock Commission, and the National Union of Farmers. They all shamelessly used the occasion as a public relations opportunity to explain how their organisation was rebuilding "consumer confidence".

You would never have known that reported cases of food poisoning have tripled in the last eight years; that there had been a rising number of food borne epidemics such as listeria, botulism, salmonella, E-coli and nvCJD; that conditions in the abattoirs are disgraceful; that the meat cutting operators deliberately flout basic hygiene procedures; that government recommendations on food safety have never been implemented; that the Audit Commission found that one in eight food premises are a danger to the public; that the level of contamination in food is increasing while prosecutions have decreased to almost zero.

Not a single recommendation was made by the platform in relation to food safety, other than that of educating the public.

One of the invited speakers was the US Department of Agriculture spokesperson, Thomas Billy, who spoke about how America was also seeking to improve food safety by training and educating the public. Just days before an unprecedented 25 million pounds in weight of contaminated meat had to be withdrawn from the US market.

A video link was established with Frank Fischler, the Commissioner of the European Union. who justified trade war measures against the US on the basis of "protecting member states" from BSE and the use of hormones in cattle.

Morris's pledge to big business

The most damning indictment of the whole proceedings came from TGWU General Secretary Bill Morris. He explained that the TGWU's aim was to establish a national consensus for the food industry based on "partnership" between employers, unions and consumers:

"The Thatcher years were not wasted years but learning years", he said, "We have turned our arrogance into confidence, hence this conference... We want a relationship with management.

"We can't compete on the basis of conflict. We have to build confidence in our industry for competitivity. We will work with good employers. We will discuss flexibility and change to break the old traditional culture. We must solve the national malaise. Britain comes first. The past is another country. In this industry we too can do it differently. We are all stakeholders now -- we want an inclusive approach."

The unions are already partners with the bosses in all but name. They have presided over more than a decade of cost cutting and speedups to make the food and agri-business corporations internationally competitive. They have collaborated in slashing manning levels, imposing part-time and casual work and extending working hours. It is this that has created the conditions where workers dare not oppose bad practices for fear of losing their jobs.

Workers cannot entrust the defence of their livelihoods and health either to Blair or the union leadership. They must construct new organisations that will vigorously police food safety at the expense of the industry itself, and begin to roll back the onslaught on all conditions.

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