What have you had in your mouth lately?

What have you had in your mouth lately?

Horsemeat scandal in the UK won't let up

This is an investigative journalist's dream. The UK's press fell on the story, baying with glee at the chance to uncover more horsing around with our food - and they've come up trumps.

February 13, 2013 8:44 by kippreport

The horsemeat scandal gripping the UK and Ireland has been a fascinating story to watch unfolding – samples of processed meats in Ireland tested positive for traces of horse DNA, with Dunnes Stores as well as cut price chains Lidl and Aldi stocking contaminated products.

The story spread quickly, with Tesco’s ‘Everyday Value’ burgers found to contain 29% of everyday horsemeat and ‘Everyday Value’ spaghetti bolognese some 60% geegee. Findus was doubtless horrified to find itself dragged into the controversy as tests found its beef lasagne contained from 60 to 100% horsemeat.

This is an investigative journalist’s dream. The UK’s press fell on the story, baying with glee at the chance to uncover more horsing around with our food – and they’ve come up trumps. At the heart of early investigations was Irish meat processor Silvercrest and French food processor Comigel. Comigel is a huge supplier of ‘white label’ frozen ready meals and the company that supplied the products to Findus and Tesco – as well as Aldi whose ‘Today’s Special’ lasagne and spag bog were also found to contain ‘Newmarket steak’ instead of beef.

In fact Comigel produces some 30,000 tonnes of white label frozen ready meals a year, which it sells to companies across Europe. It’s the Nike of nosh – and the companies that glibly bought low-cost products from Comigel appear to have sacrificed consumers’ interests for competitive advantage and profitability. Hands up if you’re surprised. The company’s customers included French chain (and Carrefour rival) Auchan as well as other supermarket chains in 15 countries. Silvercrest’s now-shuttered plant in Monaghan produced 3.7 million burgers a day – 9 out of 13 tested contained horse meat. There are going to be an awful lot of inspections going on right now…

Now British authorities have raided an abbatoir and a meat production company over concerns at horsemeat finding its way into meat for ‘burgers and kebabs’ - Peter Boddy Licensed Slaughterhouse in Todmorden, West Yorkshire, and Farmbox Meats Ltd are both facing the high jump. Sorry.

Gulf News ran a piece today on the ongoing scandal, reporting on the news coverage that has rolled and rolled throughout the past couple of weeks in the UK and Ireland. Gulf News’ attempt to get comment from the Abu Dhabi Food Control Authority confirmed they were carrying out checks, but weren’t going to ‘comment at this time’.

Which is a shame as there is certainly some room for consumer concern here in the UAE. British and European supermarkets and brands are a dominant force in retail – and those levels of concern are hardly likely to get any lower as investigations unearth more and more consequences of supermarkets and brands abandoning traceability for profit. This is one story that’s certainly not going away any time soon.

Now the latest twist in the tale is that high-end UK supermarket brand Waitrose has been found to be selling meatballs contaminated with pork - in fact up to 30% of the company’s ‘Essentials’ meatballs are pork meat. Waitrose buys the meat from, wait for it, Silvercrest.

Can the UAE’s supermarkets and food processors assure their customers of full traceability and that the foods they are selling are not contaminated by this scandal? Who’s asking them? It’s at a time like this you’d really want to be well served by your media. And no comment is not really what we need to hear.

Written by Alex Mcnabb here.