Surely we’ve all been listening to the back and forth between industry and government on the issue of gangmasters in the last 18 months.
It seems an eternity ago that the GLA first promised to rid the country of the nasty labour-abusing element that stains UK industry in the eyes of many consumers.
As with genetic modification, there has always been a tendency for fresh produce to be held up as an example of the bad gangmaster practices that pervade many industries. No doubt it suits the unscrupulous, as it is rare that fresh produce companies operate outside the accepted norms.
So you’d think this industry would be more right-on than most when it comes to understanding its obligations. Perhaps it is, and perhaps there is nothing we can do about the emergence of emotive terminology that is now entrenched in the British vocabulary.
But maybe also there should have been more effort from within to distance this industry from allegations - the majority of which are entirely false - that have been thrown at, and stuck to it, in recent years.
If “labour providers” choose to ignore the food industry to avoid having to be labelled gangmasters, it is either because they believe, by association, that their every move will be stalked by scare-hungry pressure groups or that they are, in fact, operating illegally.
And finally - OFT? No comment.