What relevance does the horsemeat affair have for fresh produce? Surely such a catastrophic supply chain failure and loss of public trust couldn’t possibly happen to the fruit and veg trade. Could it?

Well unfortunately, in this world of instant communication and insatiable rolling news, yes it could. It would only take the press getting hold of one rogue operator passing off imported fruit as British or selling conventional produce as organic to get everyone questioning the integrity of the products they buy.

We have already seen how the spreading of misinformation – in the case of the German E. coli situation – can have a disastrous impact on sales, and the horsemeat scandal only serves to underline how vital it is that both individual companies and the wider industry have effective crisis management strategies in place (see pages 22-23).

There have been some great examples of good practice in this area, firstly in the co-ordinated response to the discovery of E. coli in the UK in 2011, then with the kind of collaborative preventative measures led by the soft-fruit industry against Spotted Wing Drosophila, as reported in FPJ last week.

Nothing should stop you from being prepared for a disaster. Not even wild horses.