There are lots of opportunities for criminality in the food chain which is seen as a “soft target”, the chief executive of the Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI) has said.

The horsemeat scandal, about which Professor Alan Reilly’s organization raised the alarm last year, was a “wake-up call to Europe that criminals were getting involved in the food chain and were up to no good,” he said.

There are many different ways for criminals to put poor food into the supply such as substandard olive oil being labelled as premium and putting cheap wine into bottles labelled as premium brands, he said.

The length of the food chain means there are lots of opportunities for fraud, he said. If producers are buying their food ingredients from Asia there is no way to check into the plant, he added .

The food industry must “up its game” and take the threat of food fraud and criminal intent “really seriously”, Prof Reilly said. There need to be “robust control systems” for suppliers as have been introduced for meat testing.