The food industry has pledged to clean up its act and do more to combat deliberate fraud, RTL news reports on Thursday.

The measures follow the recent horse meat scandal in which horse was sold as beef in a number of ready-prepared meals.

‘Food is safer than ever and it is up to the industry to better guarantee it,’ Marc Jansen of the food industry lobby group CBL said at the presentation of the new plans.

The new approach involves setting up a ‘white list’ of approved firms. Companies not on the list will get extra attention from food safety inspectors. The fines for breaking food safety rules will also be doubled.

Unacceptable

‘Consumers must be sure that what they are eating is safe,’ said health minister Edith Schippers. ‘Fraud and misleading labels are unacceptable.’

Earlier on Thursday, broadcaster Nos reported that food companies are extremely lax about reporting cases of wrongful labelling to the food safety body.

Food safety inspectors received just six reports over the past two years, but experts told the broadcaster the problem is much larger. Nobody knows how widespread labelling fraud is ‘but I think you would scream if you knew how much there is,’ one laboratory worker told Nos.