Nestle discovers horse meat in food items

Biggest Food Co Latest To Find Traces Of Horse DNA In Beef Products In Italy, France & Spain

London: The horse meat scandal in Europe is only getting worse with the world’s biggest food company now saying that tests have found traces of horse DNA in their packed products made from beef in Italy, France and Spain.
    Nestle on Tuesday said, “Our tests have found traces of horse DNA in two products made from beef. The levels found are above the 1% threshold the UK’s Food Safety Agency uses to indicate likely adulteration or gross negligence.” It added, “When reports first emerged in the UK about the fraudulent mislabeling of beef, we enhanced testing of our products and the raw materials we use across Europe. We are now suspending deliveries of all our finished products produced using beef supplied by a German firm.”
    Nestle added that there was no food safety issue “but the mislabeling of products means they fail to meet the very high standards consumers expect from us. We are also enhancing our existing comprehensive quality assurance programme by adding new tests on beef for horse DNA prior to production in Europe. We want to apologize to consumers and reassure them that the actions being taken to deal with this issue will result in higher standards and enhanced traceablity.”
    An update on test results from throughout the food industry will be published by the Food Standards Agency of UK next Friday with a further update to be published on March 1. After that, food businesses will update the FSA on their tests results every three months.
    UK’s environment secretary Owen Paterson meanwhile met representatives of food businesses including retailers, manufacturers, wholesalers and trade associations asking them to conduct tests on all their products.
    At the meeting, food businesses right through the supply chain agreed to do their level best to report back as many testing results as possible to the FSA by Friday.
    Latest revelations on the horse meat scandal shows that FSA had written a letter to the department for environment, food and rural affairs (Defra) in April 2011 warning that horse meat was being passed off as beef.
    The letter also warned Defra that packaged food was also being contaminated with horse meat, but the warnings were ignored. Paterson has now asked FSA to investigate the claims that the govenment was indeed warned .
    John Young, a former manager at the Meat Hygiene Service write a letter to former minister Sir Jim Paice on behalf of Britain’s largest horse meat exporter, High Peak Meat Exports warning that its effort to stop meat containing the anti-inflammatory drug phenylbutazone, known as bute, getting into the food chain was a “debacle”. “I have discussed it with the chief executive of the FSA and she is going to go back through the records and see exactly what was said at the time,” he said.
    The FSA meanwhile has submitted a full file and evidence on this scandal to Europol. The data submitted is now being analysed by both Europol and law enforcement agencies in 35 countries across Europe and elsewhere. Latest data shows horse meat has been consumed by millions of children and hospital patients across Europe.
Another victim: Top Brazil beef producer
    The world’s top beef producer, JBS of Brazil, was on Tuesday the latest firm to be embroiled in Europe’s horse meat scandal. JBS which used HJ Schypke as a subcontractor, said its Belgian branch would stop buying European meat. It added, “Schypke, a German manufacturer of processed meat products, is not in any way part of the JBS Group.”