The Food Standards Agency (FSA) has completed its third round of testing food for horse DNA and found four additional products that are tainted. That brings the total number of products tainted to 17. All of these contaminated products, sold throughout the United Kingdom, have been withdrawn from the market.
The products added to the recall are: Bird’s Eye Traditional Spaghetti Bolognese, Bird’s Eye Beef lasagne, Brakes spicy minced beef skewer and Taco Bell ground beef.
So far, the agency has received results of 5,430 tests. Over 99 percent of them have shown no trace of horse DNA. None of the products containing horse meat have tested positive for traces of the veterinary medicine phenylbutazone (bute) which would be harmful to humans if ingested. The FSA advises consumers to check the list (at link above) before purchasing meat products. Consumers who have already purchased the recalled products should not eat them.
Three arrests have been made in connection with the scandal which was uncovered last month when authorities discovered horse DNA in beef burger, beef meal and salami products.
The FSA is focussing its efforts on finding and recalling products containing more than 1 percent of horse meat, a level which gross negligence or deliberate substitution of one meat for another, the agency has stated. The initial testing phase is almost complete. Next week, the FSA will be publishing results from the UK-wide sampling programme being carried out by local authorities on behalf of the agency.
Stop Slaughtering Horses PERIOD – If you can’t keep it out of the food chain and it is a KNOWN toxic meat with all kinds of drugs in it – then if Belgium wants the filty job of selling horses for meat -then let them do their own butchering – Horses are not food and should not be forced down the throats of people…It is an unclean meat so apparently any respect for religious beliefs of Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Hindus is out the window….maybe we should put feces in their meat ///