Minister for Agriculture Simon Coveney said this evening he would be asking Irish manufacturers of processed meat products to carry out DNA testing and to work with the Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI) in developing testing protocols for this purpose. The Minister said the move was a “necessary step in order to provide further reassurance to Irish consumers and consumers of Irish food abroad”. The announcement comes shortly after Tesco revealed that its frozen Everyday Value Spaghetti Bolognese contained horse DNA of more than 60 per cent in some samples. The product was supposed to only contain Irish beef. Tesco withdrew it from sale as a precaution last week because it was made in the French Comigel factory which had produced Findus beef lasagne which was found to contain up to 100 per cent horsemeat.

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DNA testing for all meat products

2. Minister for Agriculture Simon Coveney said this evening he would be
asking Irish manufacturers of processed meat products to carry out DNA
testing and to work with the Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI) in
developing testing protocols for this purpose.
The Minister said the move was a “necessary step in order to provide
further reassurance to Irish consumers and consumers of Irish food
abroad”.
The announcement comes shortly after Tesco revealed that its frozen
Everyday Value Spaghetti Bolognese contained horse DNA of more than
60 per cent in some samples.
The product was supposed to only contain Irish beef. Tesco withdrew it
from sale as a precaution last week because it was made in the French
Comigel factory which had produced Findus beef lasagne which was found
to contain up to 100 per cent horsemeat.
Tesco group technical director Tim Smith said most of the test results
found horse DNA at a trace level of less than one per cent “but three
showed significant levels of horse DNA, exceeding 60 per cent”.

3. “The source of the horsemeat is still under investigation by the
relevant authorities. The level of contamination suggests that
Comigel was not following the appropriate production process for
our Tesco product and we will not take food from their facility
again,” Mr Smith said.
The samples did not show the presence of bute, a potentially
harmful veterinary medicine.
Mr Smith said Tesco was “very sorry” that it had let customers
down. “Our DNA testing programme is underway and will give us
and our customers assurance that the product they buy is what it
should be."
Mr Coveney and Britain’s environment secretary Owen Paterson
have agreed that the FSAI and the UK Food Standards Agency will
work together to protect the authenticity of meat ingredients used
in the manufacture of meat based products.

4. The Minister will meet the EU commissioner for health
and consumer policy Tonio Borg in Brussels on
Wednesday to consider the implications of the recent
horsemeat controversy, and what steps can be taken to
address the matter at an EU level.
The Minister has also arranged to have the issue on the
agenda for the next Council of Agriculture Ministers later
this month.
A Polish veterinary delegation will visit Ireland this week
to be briefed on the Irish investigation into the discovery
of horsemeat in beef products, following a meeting
between Mr Coveney and his Polish counterpart in
Brussels last Thursday.

5. Romania 'angered'
Romania’s prime minister Victor Ponta has said any fraud over
horse meat sold as beef had not happened in his country and he was
angered by suggestions it might have been.
The British unit of frozen foods group Findus began recalling its
beef lasagne last week on advice from its French supplier, Comigel,
which said the horse meat came from Romania.
“From all the data we have at the moment, there is no breach of
European rules committed by companies from Romania or on
Romanian territory,” Mr Ponta told a news conference. “I am very
angry, to be honest.”
An initial French investigation revealed that the horsemeat ended
up in Comigel’s Luxembourg factory, supplied by a French firm, and
that a Dutch and Cypriot trader had also been involved. However,
the meat originally came from a Romanian abattoir.

6. “It is very clear that the French company did not have any direct contract
with the Romanian company and ... it has to be established where the
fraud was committed and who is responsible for this fraud,” Mr Ponta
said.
Lasagne meals and burgers suspected of containing horse meat have been
removed from supermarket shelves in Ireland, Britain, Sweden and
France.
Aldi and Tesco have taken several products off their shelves in the
Republic. The Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI) warned consumers
not to eat Findus beef lasagne, samples of which were found to have been
contaminated with horse meat.
The UK’s Food Standards Agency (FSA) is to publish results of a second
round of tests it has ordered food producers to conduct on a wider range
beef products this week.
Mr Paterson said more contaminated products could be discovered. He
described the crisis as “an issue of fraud and a conspiracy against the
public, I think probably by criminal elements, to substitute a cheap
material for that which was marked on the label”.

7. Legal action
Findus said it is considering legal action after an internal
investigation “strongly” suggested the contamination of
its products was “not accidental”. The company said it
was considering pursuing a case against its suppliers
over what it said was their “failure to meet contractual
obligations about product integrity”.
UCD associate professor of public health Dr Patrick Wall
said the FSAI’s role in uncovering the presence of horse
DNA in products labelled as beef should be
acknowledged.

8. He said that while the authority had been criticised in
some quarters in the early stages of the crisis it had
“uncovered a huge, Europe-wide scam. If it had not been
for the FSAI this could have gone unchecked for years
and it has set the standard others across Europe will
have to follow”.
Dr Wall said dealers stood to make vast profits if they
swapped horse meat for beef. “Beef sells for around €4 a
kilo while horse meat costs no more than 90 cent,” he
said. “So what we are seeing here is fraud on an
absolutely huge scale. And the people behind this fraud
would have been making enormous sums of money.”