The scandal surrounding the contamination of beef products with horse meat is engulfing ever more countries and companies across the EU. Over the weekend, attention has focused on Romania as the potential source of contamination, while after the UK, products labeled as beef have been found to contain horse meat in France too.

At the moment, companies involved are blaming others in the supply chain. Findus, which produces ready meals found to contain up to 100 percent horse meat, has accused French company Comigel of supplying contaminated meat products. Comigel in turn blamed Spanghero for supplying horse meat, while Spanghero claims that Romanian abattoirs sold horse labeled as beef.

French Minister Benoit Hanon has announced investigations and said that Spanghero either knowingly sold horse meat as beef, or was cheated by suppliers. The Minister's comments give some indication of the potential complexity of the case. He suggested a “meat ring” had earned EUR 300,000 and said that Spanghero had bought meat from a Cypriot merchant, who had it from a Dutch supplier, who in turn had bought meat from Romanian abattoirs.

Romania's President Traian Basescu expressed concern, saying that if Romanian producers were found to have deliberately mislabeled meat, it could damage the country's image and provoke trade embargoes. However, Constantin Savu of Romania's food safety authority pointed out that some abattoirs in the country are licensed to butcher horse meat and sell it in the EU.

UK Environment Secretary Owen Paterson said that efforts would be made, in partnership with other EU countries, to discover who was responsible. “It looks as if the problem is limited to processed food and it looks as if there has been criminal substitution of beef with horse,” he said, quoted by the BBC.

In France, the supermarkets Carrefour, Monoprix, Auchan, Casino, Cora and Picard have taken Findus and Comigel ready-meals off the shelves. In the UK, the issue seems to mainly involve Findus and there has been a call from a government minister to temporarily stop imports of frozen and processed meat from the EU.

editor@romania-insider.com

photo source: sxc.hu