Food quality marker

Clearly the scandal of horsemeat being passed off as beef is by no means confined to Ireland and is now a Europe-wide problem.

Since first uncovered by Irish scientists, the controversy of adulterated beef has spread to France, Poland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Britain, where the food industry has been ordered to test an extensive range of processed product lines.

Its scale has also broadened, going far beyond the important issue of product labelling to embrace questions of consumer health. Alarmingly, in the latest case to come to light, specific tests had not been carried out on the 100% horsemeat discovered in Findus lasagne products, which have since been removed from the shelves of outlets here and in Britain.