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THE DEPARTMENT OF Agriculture is to investigate an Irish meat supplier which received horsemeat from a Dutch company that may have distributed as much as 50,000 tonnes of contaminated meat to firms across Europe.
The Food Safety Authority of Ireland has confirmed that the unnamed Irish company will be investigated by the Department to determine how much potentially contaminated meat it got and where it went.
The Irish firm is one of hundreds across Europe which have been warned that they may have been supplied with possible horse-contaminated meat from the Selten company which consists of Wiljo Import and Export and Meat Wholesaler Willy Selten.
Earlier, the Netherlands’ food safety agency has said that around 370 companies across Europe could be affected but so far there is only one Irish company involved according to officials here.
The Dutch agency sent a letter to 130 Dutch companies who were supplied with possible horse-contaminated beef from the Selten company asking them to “take it off the market as a precautionary measure” and “verify all products”.
It said that although the meat’s origin could not be guaranteed, “there are no signs of a danger to public health.”
“The companies have possibly already processed the meat and sold it,” the government’s NVWA food and consumer watchdog said in a statement. “We estimate it’s about 50,000 tonnes of meat,” it added.
NVWA spokeswoman Esther Filon told AFP that the meat was supplied between January 2011 and February 2013 across Europe.
Dutch public television NOS reported that the suspect meat could be on supermarket shelves, notably in frozen food. Because the meat was supplied in 2011, much of it has been eaten already, the NOS reported.
Dutch officials in February raided the Selten meat processing plant in the south of the Netherlands on suspicion that it was mixing horsemeat with beef and selling it as pure beef.
Since the problem was first discovered in Ireland in January, governments have scrambled to figure out how and where the mislabelling of meat happened in the sprawling chain of production spanning abattoirs and meat suppliers across Europe.
- additional reporting from AFP
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We must thank the Dutch whose finance ministers have been so vocal and hardline about us feckless Irish. This contamination will be a huge help to our agrifood industry.
The dutch bank K.B.C. are “contributing” some very worrying oversights on Irish Agriculture at the moment so I wouldn’t be too thankful to their bankers !
Not much chance of this making it into the Irish Media I guess…….
Read or watch… http://www.abc.net.au/foreign/content/2013/s3724078.htm
Only fools eat horses
Stephen you’re back havnt seen you in ages.
Horse meat is very good
Get a life
This is dust madness at this stage. I only buy from a thrusted Irish butcher now and dont eat any processed shite. Will never eate any kind of ready meal again.
Who thrusts your butcher before you buy off him?
You’ve a bit of a cold do ya mate!
If ya can buy a”box”of meat for next to nothing, do you question the contents? Or do you go, this fine meat is a steal,I can’t wait to east it,I feel healthy already?
Local butcher, Good meat, nuff said!
My wife was in a local butcher in her home town and she bought two separate meat items and when she turned around to get scones the “butcher” had scanned one of the items for a second time !
She then asked for her receipt and the “error” was “rectified” ; that butcher lost at least 6 families business as a result.
Buying scones in the butchers.
It was never going to end well.
should I have got her to test them for Horse D.N.A. ?
All this nonsense must be helping vegetarian restaurants across Europe no end
If people don’t have the money to buy decent meat they’re hardly going to have money to go out to eat in a resturant.
Here we go again, when I was a meat eater I never eat beef ,sausages, mince, meatballs etc the meat I would eat would be free range chicken good meat good taste. Now I don’t eat meat at all and I am glad but if I was ever to go back to eating meat it would be the good stuff not the rubbish stuff!
If you buy a box of beef burgers for 50 cent what you going to get ? Rubbish that is what your get.
Correction Hugh and no offence ; the problem was first discovered in June 2012 but the meat company did not release the result !
This article shows now that it has been going on since at least 2011 ; the case builds !
And our state departments contine to spout “its poses no danager to the public” “safe for consumption” “no risk”
While feebly trying to give pretence of being in control. FSA shame on you.
here hear !
Farmers: litigation, meat companies and department !
No more bacon double Dutch burgers
And try the fresh scampi in the boat house in Clogherhead it was out of this world freshly made using locally caught Clogherhead prawns
Bleedin FG!
At least seafood is good for you
Makes me hungry
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