The announcement last week by Food Standards Scotland (FSS) and the Food Standards Agency (FSA) that they were broadening their investigation into meat industry cutting plants and cold stores has resulted in further product withdrawals.

This course of action was triggered by findings at 2Sisters and Russell Hume, and has led to Fairfax Meadow voluntarily withdrawing products from sale as well as following unannounced inspections by FSS and FSA last Thursday, 8 February. FSS and FSA said: “Those unannounced inspections revealed concerns about the procedures and processes the company had been using to apply use-by dates on some of its products.”

Muscle Foods have also announced a withdrawal of products supplied by DB Foods, also as a result of use by labelling issues.

“We had concerns about procedures at DB Foods for use-by dates on some products that were not compliant with legal requirements,” the FSA said.

The results of the review are to be made public later this month.

Meanwhile, Professor Chris Elliott from Queen’s University, who led the investigation into the use of horsemeat in beef products in 2013, has commented on Twitter about the “wave of issues” hitting the sector and referred to “Dickensian bad times & seemingly Dickensian food standards”. Use of Dickensian food standards was challenged by Norman Bagley, from the Association of Independent Meat Suppliers (AIMS) who highlighted that no enforcement was anticipated by FSA in the Fairfax case.

Jason Feeny, FSA chief executive also joined in the Twitter conversation highlighting that they “received intelligence on a small number of firms in the wake of Russell Hume …. hence the burst of recent enforcement action”.