Horsemeat in School Meals Sees Food Pulled From UK Cafeterias
In the latest development in the horse meat scandal plaguing the United Kingdom, reports out today reveal that school lunches in the U.K. were found to contain horse meat.
Lancashire County Council stated that tests revealed the meat was in several school lunch products, but added that all of the foodstuffs in questions had been removed from the various school cafeterias.
Andrew Wadge, the Food Standards Agency of Ireland chief scientist, said that while there is no danger to the public health wise, retailers and food distributors need to take steps to ensure that food is properly labeled and that customers are getting what is advertised.
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"If you're in the business of selling food, you have to make sure you're clear to consumers that what you sell is what it says on label," he said.
The news comes just a week after the food company Findus revealed that it tested several of its frozen beef lasagna products, which are produced by French supplier Comigel, and they were found to have contained a large percentage of horse meat.
"Findus withdrew the beef lasagna products after its French supplier, Comigel, raised concerns about the type of meat used in the lasagna," the agency said in a statement. "We have no evidence to suggest that this is a food safety risk."
The FSA also recently published the results of tests on all supermarket beef products, revealing that 29 of the 2,501 samples contained horse meat.
There are around 900 more test results to be released, with the next round of result set to be published next week.
"We are demanding that food businesses conduct authenticity tests on all beef products, such as beef burgers, meatballs and lasagna, and provide the results to the FSAI," Catherine Brown, chief executive of the agency, read in a statement.
