As the horsemeat scandal seems to be getting worse, an emergency meeting has been called between French agriculture and food ministers and consumers, as per BBC report.
Soon after the scandal came to light that foods sold as beef in UK and Europe was horsemeat, frozen beef by Findus and Comigel were withdrawn by least six supermarkets in France, as per report.
Concerns about the substitution of horsemeat for beef first emerged in mid-January when supermarket chains withdrew several ranges of burgers. Fears of contamination prompted hundreds of European food companies to conduct DNA checks on their products.
A sample of 1.6 per cent of the more than 9,000 British horse carcasses exported to European markets showed five contaminated with phenylbutazone, also known as bute, which is banned in the human food chain, The Independent claimed in a report.
Experts within the horse slaughter industry have told the Observer there is evidence that both Polish and Italian mafia gangs are running multimillion-pound scams to substitute horsemeat for beef during food production.
There are claims that vets and other officials working within abattoirs and food production plants are intimidated into signing off meat as beef when it is in fact cheaper alternatives such as pork or horse.
Meanwhile, the FSA was accused of a shambolic handling of the escalating scandal after it emerged that it is failing to stop exports of carcasses that could contain a banned drug harmful to humans.
On Sunday, UK Environment secretary Owen Paterson issued the warning after emergency meeting with supermarket bosses and Food Standards Agency (FSA) to tackle the scandal of horse in beef products.
Paterson said the scandal was either due to “gross incompetence” or an international criminal “conspiracy”.
–PTI