Showing posts with label horsemeat. Show all posts
Showing posts with label horsemeat. Show all posts

Friday 8 February 2013

Horsemeat tests ordered on beef products


Horsemeat tests ordered on beef products
Catherine Brow
Food retailers have been told to carry out tests on all processed beef products after some Findus lasagnes were found to contain 100% horsemeat.
The Food Standards Agency (FSA), which ordered the UK tests, said it was "highly likely" criminal activity was to blame for the contamination.
It said there was no evidence of a health risk, but its chief executive said it was an "appalling situation".
Findus has apologised to customers and withdrawn the meals from sale.
Findus is the latest company to be caught up in the controversy surrounding contamination of meat products, which has affected companies in the UK, Irish Republic, Poland and France.
Findus's affected products were made by a third-party French supplier, which had alerted the company to concerns that the beef lasagne product did not "conform to specification".

“Start Quote

We will take whatever action we consider necessary if we discover evidence of criminality or negligence”
Owen PatersonEnvironment Secretary
'Criminal trade'
Catherine Brown, the FSA's chief executive, told the BBC: "I have to say that that the two cases of gross contamination that we see here indicates that it is highly likely there has been criminal and fraudulent activity involved.
"We are demanding that food businesses conduct authenticity tests on all beef products, such as beef burgers, meatballs and lasagne, and provide the results to the FSA. The tests will be for the presence of significant levels of horsemeat."
The agency has asked for test results by next Friday.
It has also ordered Findus to test the contaminated lasagne for the veterinary drug phenylbutazone, or "bute".
"Animals treated with phenylbutazone are not allowed to enter the food chain as [the drug] may pose a risk to human health," it said.
Findus had withdrawn its beef lasagne in 320g, 360g and 500g sizes as a precaution on Monday.
The FSA said Findus had tested 18 of its beef lasagne products and found 11 meals containing between 60% and 100% horsemeat.
It advised people who had bought any Findus beef lasagne products not to eat them and to return them to the shop from which they were purchased.
Environment Secretary Owen Paterson said the findings were "completely unacceptable" and the presence of unauthorised ingredients "cannot be tolerated".
Mr Paterson said the government was working closely with businesses to "root out any illegal activity" and enforce regulations.
TescoSupermarket chains Tesco and Aldi have also withdrawn some beef products
"Consumers can be confident that we will take whatever action we consider necessary if we discover evidence of criminality or negligence," he said.
Shadow environment secretary Mary Creagh said the latest revelations raised questions about the extent of the scandal.
"This is no longer just a food safety issue but possibly a criminal trade," she said.
Findus confirmed the product was manufactured by a third-party supplier and said all its other products had been tested and were not affected.
Supplier concerns
The company said: "We understand this is a very sensitive subject for consumers and we would like to reassure you we have reacted immediately. We do not believe this to be a food safety issue.
"We are confident that we have fully resolved this supply chain issue. We would like to take this opportunity to apologise to our customers for any inconvenience caused."
Earlier this week, French food supplier Comigel had alerted Findus and Aldi and advised them to withdraw Findus Beef Lasagne and Aldi's Today's Special Frozen Beef Lasagne and Today's Special Frozen Spaghetti Bolognese.
Tesco also decided to withdraw Everyday Value Spaghetti Bolognese.
The Tesco product was produced at the same Comigel site but there was no evidence of contamination, the supermarket said.
The wider food contamination controversy arose in mid-January when Irish food inspectors announced they had found horsemeat in some burgers stocked by a number of UK supermarket chains, including Tesco, Iceland and Lidl.
Asda has withdrawn products supplied by Newry-based Freeza Meats, which was storing meat found to contain a high proportion of horse DNA. Two samples were found to contain 80% horsemeat.
The horsemeat controversy has hit the Irish meat-processing industry, with a number of suppliers on both sides of the border affected.

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Friday 25 January 2013

Why are the British revolted by the idea of horsemeat?


Why are the British revolted by the idea of horsemeat?

Burgers and sausages on BBQ

In today's Magazine

Horsemeat has been found in beefburgers on sale in UK and Irish Republic supermarkets. But why do the British have such a revulsion over the idea of eating horsemeat?
The discovery of horse DNA in burgers in major supermarkets such as Tesco and Iceland has been met with alarm among consumers.
Horse-eating, or hippophagy, spread in Europe in the 19th Century, after famines caused several governments to license horse butcheries.
The meat is still commonly consumed in France and Belgium, as well as parts of Central Asia and South America.
So why are the British so squeamish about eating horse?

The answer

Horse eating carrots and apple
  • Horses are seen as pets
  • Historically, they were useful for transport and war
  • There are emotional connotations
There is no real logic as to why plenty of Britons are perfectly willing to eat cows, pigs, and chickens, but see horses as taboo, according to Dr Roger Mugford, an animal psychologist who runs the Animal Behaviour Centre.
"I'm a farmer and there is an irony. Why are horses different from pigs and lambs?" he says.
Part of the reason is people frequently see horses as pets, and humans tend to put "extra qualities and values" on animals they call pets, he says.
"As soon as you give an animal a name, how can you eat it? I've got lambs, sheep, with names - they live forever. I don't name the commercial flock, which won't," he says.

Quite the fashion

Horse-meat butcher in Paris
From Curiosities of Food by Peter Lund Simmonds, published 1859
At Paris, where all eccentricities are found and even encouraged, one of the latest gastronomic innovations is the use of horse-flesh.
This social phenomenon of making the horse contribute to the nourishment of the human race is not altogether new. The ancient Germans and Scandinavians had a marked liking for horse-flesh. The nomad tribes of Northern Asia make horse-flesh their favourite food.
With the high ruling prices of butcher's meat, what think you, gentlemen and housekeepers, of horse flesh as a substitute for beef and mutton?
Banquets of horse-flesh are at present the rage in Paris, Toulouse and Berlin. The veterinary schools there pronounce horse-bone soup preferable beyond measure to the old-fashioned beef-bone liquid, and much more economical.
History is also responsible for attitudes towards horses, according to Mugford.
"Horses helped out in warfare. There have been huge sacrifices alongside riders in historic battles. And there are sentimental depictions like War Horse," he says.
Their widespread use as working animals has had a lasting effect, argues food historian Ivan Day.
"We have to remember at one point, before railways, horses were the main means of transport. You don't eat your Aston Martin," he says.
Food historian Dr Annie Gray agrees the primary reasons for not eating horses were "their usefulness as beast of burden, and their association with poor or horrid conditions of living".
She suspects the practical considerations have become so embedded in culinary norms that horseflesh has garnered emotional connotations.
But all of the above reasons apply as much to France as they do to the UK. There must be more to it.
"It enables us to have yet another point of difference with the French," says Gray.
"Beef has long been symbolic of Englishness and therefore anything we can do or say to put British beef on a pedestal is usually done - ergo the thought that the French eat horse while we eat good beef becomes a chauvinistic way of asserting national identity," she says.

Horsemeat production levels in 2009

  • China - 168,000 tonnes
  • Mexico - 81,749 tonnes
  • Kazakhstan - 71,387 tonnes
  • Russia - 48,936 tonnes
  • Argentina - 37,712 tonnes
  • Mongolia - 35,582 tonnes
Source: United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organisation
Gray, who lived in France for three years, says for her, it is completely natural to eat horsemeat as it was sold at her local butcher.
"I am far more concerned with where the food is from. I would far rather eat ethically sourced, well-cared for horse, than battery chicken, for example," she says.
So are attitudes changing at all?
Peta says the thought of unexpectedly tucking into a horse burger has "rightly shocked the nation". But it says Britons who say "neigh" to horsemeat do so only because they find ponies "cute".

Who, what, why?

Question mark
A part of BBC News Magazine, Who, What, Why? aims to answer questions behind the headlines
"Why is one species cherished while another is spurned? If this story has shocked people, they should consider leaving all flesh off their plates and going vegan," it says.
Rather than seeing them as "cute", others may be more inclined to think of horses as majestic, or associate them with nobility.
The killing of horses for meat is still an emotive subject as many people see them as companion animals rather than a food source, according to the RSPCA.
But the proliferation of horsemeat jokes on Twitter suggests other people are seeing the lighter side of the story.
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Contaminated horsemeat sold for food, FSA admits


Contaminated horsemeat sold for food, FSA admits

Mary CreaghMary Creagh has called for action to stop any more horses with bute entering the food chain

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The Food Standards Agency has admitted five horses which tested positive for a drug harmful to humans were exported to France for food.
Earlier, shadow environment secretary Mary Creagh said "several" UK-slaughtered horses with phenylbutazone, or bute, may have been sold for food.
The FSA said it identified eight cases of bute-positive horsemeat in 2012, none of which was for the UK market.
The drug is banned from being consumed by humans within the EU.
The FSA added that the other three horses which tested positive did not enter the food chain.
"Where the meat had been exported to other countries, the relevant food safety authorities were informed," it said. "None of the meat had been placed for sale on the UK market."
The news comes after traces of horse and pig DNA was recently found in some burgers.
Some of these were sold in Tesco, Iceland, Lidl, Aldi and Dunnes stores in the UK and Irish Republic. Tesco took out adverts in British newspapers apologising for selling some of the burgers.
There is no suggestion that these burgers contained phenylbutazone.
'Right to know'
Phenylbutazone is an anti-inflammatory drug which is given to horses for the treatment of lameness, pain and fever.
It is thought to cause bone marrow disorders in rare cases - and horses that have been administered the drug should have the information recorded on their passport.
image of David ShukmanAnalysisDavid ShukmanScience editor, BBC News
For horsemeat containing bute to get into the food chain, several safety processes have to fail.
First the horse's passport tracking its drug history has to be misleading - an illegal act in itself.
Then the horse has to get past the spot checks - relatively easy because not many are carried out.
Finally, the meat has to end up being processed and sold for human use - almost always on the Continent, very little being eaten here.
The numbers involved in this scenario cannot be large since only around 8,000 horses are slaughtered each year.
But checks since 2007 do show bute turning up in small but consistent quantities. And the stuff is best avoided.
A specialist Defra committee says it has "serious adverse effects". Real harm is very unlikely, but the episode once again raises awkward questions about the international meat trade.
But Labour claims the issuing of horse passports in the UK is fragmented, as there are 75 approved issuing organisations in the UK, with no national database to track the information.
Speaking prior to the FSA's statement, Ms Creagh told agriculture minister David Heath in the Commons: "I am in receipt of evidence showing that several horses slaughtered in UK abattoirs last year tested positive for phenylbutazone, or bute, a drug which causes cancer in humans and is banned from the human food chain.
"It is possible that those animals entered the human food chain."
When Ms Creagh asked if Mr Heath was aware of the phenylbutazone cases to which she referred, the minister replied: "The Food Standards Agency carry out checks in slaughterhouses to ensure that equine animals presented for slaughter are fit for human consumption in the same way as they do for cattle, sheep and other animals.
"In addition, the FSA carry out subsequent testing for phenylbutazone and other veterinary medicines in meat from horses slaughtered in this country.
"Where positive results for phenylbutazone are found, the FSA investigates and takes follow-up action to trace the meat."
Ms Creagh then asked if that meant Mr Heath was aware of the issue.
"I'm astonished that you have not raised this and I think the public have a right to know," she said.
'No evidence'
She also said the news was a "very serious development" and demanded action to ensure that "illegal and carcinogenic horsemeat stops entering the human food chain".
And she called on the government to reverse a "reckless" decision to end the National Equine Database.
But Mr Heath replied: "There is no difficulty in tracing the use of a horse passport. To suggest the National Equine Database was required to do that is simply erroneous."
Alastair Hay, professor of environmental toxicology at the University of Leeds, disputed Ms Creagh's claims about the drug causing cancer in humans.
He said there was "no convincing evidence" of phenylbutazone's carcinogenicity in humans "because in the individuals studied many other drugs had also been taken and any one of these might have caused the cancers seen".
And there is no animal evidence either that it is a carcinogen, he added, saying that "phenylbutazone is not classifiable as to its carcinogenicity" according to the International Agency for Research on Cancer.
"The reason the chemical is not for human consumption appears to be rare and idiosyncratic responses in humans to the chemical. These include aplastic anaemia and some other disorders of the bone marrow. But these are not cancer events."

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