Leaders: Regulators fall at the first fence | Miss is as good as a mile

ACCORDING to the Food Standards Agency, a drug called bute given to horses, which can be dangerous to humans, has been found in some of the horse carcasses that have made their way in to the food chain.

While considerable quantities of products containing horse meat would have to be eaten before posing a threat to human health, the news can only work to heighten public concern. And that concern comes down to one question: what is it exactly that we are eating?

What is now clear is that the more investigations have been undertaken by slow-off-the-mark regulatory agencies, the clearer it has become that horse meat has indeed been entering the food chain.

Bute (phenylbutazone) is occasionally used as a treatment for gout and arthritis. In rare cases it can cause a serious blood disorder, aplastic anaemia. For that reason it is not allowed to enter the human food chain. That it has taken two weeks for traces of the drug to emerge poses serious questions over safety standards within the food processing industry across Europe and here in the UK for the competence of the FSA.

First we are told that “beefburgers” and beef lasagne contained traces of horsemeat. Then it emerges that the horsemeat may have originated from abattoirs in the UK as well as Ireland and continental Europe. Complex maps have appeared of the routes by which the contents of processed and ready-made goods travel hundreds of miles across several countries and different regulatory jurisdictions through a maze of different handling agencies. For example, a meat processing factory in the Irish Republic has withdrawn some batches of burger products which contained beef supplied from Poland – some of which were found to contain between 5 and 30 per cent horsemeat.

Further investigation has pointed to criminal activity. Now we are told of the presence of bute, which can only work to undermine official assurances that horse meat is still safe to consume and that the controversy is purely an issue about labelling and packaging.

Little wonder consumers are asking what else might emerge from this scandal, and that in supermarkets across the land, footfall in the aisles of processed and ready-made foods has fallen sharply. Confidence in everyday meat products is at risk and the disclosures to date, far from ameliorating public trust, have worked to undermine it further.

Two major questions must be addressed. The first is how criminal activity can be eradicated from what is a massive international business that has so far been able to elude close inspection. The second how governments across Europe can work quickly and effectively to impose a uniform disclosure regime and set of rules to re-establish public trust. The EU, notorious for its obsession with regulation, has fallen where it critically matters.

Miss is as good as a mile

Hello, asteroid 2012 DA14. Nice of you to drop by today, but please keep travelling. The 150-ft wide lump of rock may be 17,200 miles away but this in asteroid terms is a close shave. It will come within the orbits of more than 100 telecommunication and weather satellites.

It’s not the first visit of 2012 DA14. It passed by on February 16 last year, missing us by some 1.6 million miles. The exact shape of its orbit is not known, but impact is not expected any time soon. The next encounter is not expected until 2046, well after the independence referendum, and is unlikely to get much closer than one million miles.

Other lumps of rock have come closer: 2011 CQ1 came within 3,300 miles and in 2008, the small asteroid 2008 TC3 hit the Earth. But it was only a metre across and burnt up over the Sudan.

So we’re safe for now, and after all, planet Earth is hit every day by space stuff, albeit minuscule in size. But there’s no room for complacency. On average, a 50-metre asteroid passes this close roughly every 40 years. These events are random and the next event might not be for 100 years – or could hove in next week. And should an asteroid hit, it could cause colossal damage and dislocation. DA14 – big enough to cause havoc, small enough to be easily missed – could take out a city the size of London.

So even at a distance of 17,200 miles, DA14 is a reminder of our vulnerability. It provides an opportunity for us to learn more about asteroids and their behaviour and to add to our knowledge. As important, it underscores the need for constant vigilance, should we ever have to contend with the prospect of a direct hit.