LONDON -- Tests have found horse meat in school meals, hospital food and restaurant dishes in Britain, officials said Friday, as the scandal over adulterated meat spread beyond frozen supermarket products.
Results were coming in after food safety officials in the United Kingdom ordered supermarkets and suppliers to test all processed meals labeled "beef" for traces of horse meat.Whitbread Plc., Britain's largest hotel and restaurant company, said horse DNA has been found in lasagna and burgers on its menus. The company, whose outlets include Premier Inn hotels and the Brewers Fayre and Beefeater Grill restaurant chains, said it is "shocked and disappointed at this failure of the processed meat supply chain."Officials also said horse meat was present in cottage pies delivered to 47 schools in Lancashire County, northern England, and in hospital meals in Northern Ireland. David Bingham of the health service's Business Services Organization said the hospital meals, from a supplier in the Republic of Ireland, have been withdrawn.Several British supermarket chains, including Morrisons and Tesco, said Friday that their products have so far tested negative for horse meat.Duncan Campbell, a senior British food inspector, said the results will give a snapshot of the extent of the horse meat contamination, which has already seen products pulled from supermarket shelves across Europe.But, he told the BBC, "I think there will be still more discoveries to be made.""The more people have looked for horse meat, the more products have been found containing it. I don't think we have got to the bottom of it yet," he said.Officials from European Union countries decided Friday to proceed with more intensive checks to detect horse meat in food labeled as beef.In addition, horse meat will be tested for phenylbutazone, or bute, an anti-inflammatory veterinary drug that's illegal to use in food animals.The scandal, which erupted after Irish authorities found traces of horse DNA in frozen burgers last month, has grown to take in companies and countries across Europe.NorgesGruppen, Norway's largest grocery retailer, said Friday that horse meat has also been confirmed in frozen lasagna sold in its stores.The crisis has raised questions about food controls in the 27-nation European Union -- and highlighted how little consumers know about the complex trading operations that get food from producers to wholesalers to processers to stores and onto dinner tables.French Consumer Affairs Minister Benoit Hamon said Thursday that fraudulent meat sales over several months apparently reached across 13 countries and 28 companies. He identified French meat wholesaler Spanghero as a major culprit.The company denied wrongdoing.Hamon said Spanghero was one company in a food production chain that started with two Romanian slaughterhouses, which say they clearly labeled their meat as horse.The meat was then bought by a Cyprus-registered trader and sent to a warehouse in the Netherlands.Have more to add? News tip? Tell us
