Horse DNA found in frozen dinner

Horse DNA has been found in a frozen dinner withdrawn from sale last week by Tesco.

In a statement issued last night, Tesco said tests had confirmed horse DNA exceeding 60% in three samples of its Everyday Value spaghetti bolognese.

Further tests to determine if the meal contained veterinary drug phenylbutazone or “bute” were negative.

Animals treated with bute are not allowed enter the food chain because it can cause rare cases of a serious blood disorder, aplastic anaemia.

Tesco said last night that most samples tested contained trace levels of less than 1% horse DNA.

Tim Smith, Tesco group technical director, said the source of the horsemeat is still under investigation by the relevant authorities.

He said the level of contamination “suggests that Comigel was not following the appropriate production process for our Tesco product” and that the chain would not be taking food from the French supplier’s plant in Luxembourg again.

Comigel manufactured the Findus lasagnes found to contain up to 100% horsemeat at the same factory.

Findus has said it is considering taking legal action against its suppliers as an internal investigation “strongly suggests” the contamination “was not accidental”.

Comigel says the questionable meat came from Romania, but yesterday Romanian prime minister Victor Ponta denied that any fraud over horsemeat sold as beef had happened in his country.

In what is now a European-wide scandal, British environment secretary Owen Paterson has warned legal actions will be mounted in Europe. He described the contamination of beef products as a case of fraud against the public.

Here at home, the Department of Agriculture has ruled out operating a temporary ban on the importation of meat from European countries.

Chairman of the Labour Party, Colm Keaveney, made the call yesterday, saying it was needed until a definitive source of the horse meat contamination could be identified. “The agri-food sector is one of our key industries and a highly significant part of our export sector. Reputation is everything when it comes to marketing Ireland as a producer of high-quality foods. The horsemeat scandal has now spread to 16 countries in the EU.”

Mr Keaveney said he would be using his position on the Oireachtas committee on agriculture to press for the radical action.

“We need to see a similar approach in terms of decisive action as we did in the last foot and mouth outbreak,” said Mr Keaveney.

The department last night ruled out such action, saying: “That wouldn’t be possible in a single European market. That wouldn’t be an option. There’s also no food safety issue here.”