3 statues of horses' heads, above a horsemeat butcher shop in Paris, Friday Feb 15, 2013. Tests have found horsemeat in school meals, hospital food and restaurant dishes in Britain, officials said Friday, as the scandal over adulterated meat spread beyond frozen supermarket products. French French Consumer Affairs Minister Benoit Hamon said Thursday that it appeared fraudulent meat sales over several months reached across 13 countries and 28 companies. He identified French meat wholesaler Spanghero as a major culprit. (AP Photo/Jacques Brinon)
Runners and riders in Europe's horsemeat scandal
3 statues of horses' heads, above a horsemeat butcher shop in Paris, Friday Feb 15, 2013. Tests have found horsemeat in school meals, hospital food and restaurant dishes in Britain, officials said Friday, as the scandal over adulterated meat spread beyond frozen supermarket products. French French Consumer Affairs Minister Benoit Hamon said Thursday that it appeared fraudulent meat sales over several months reached across 13 countries and 28 companies. He identified French meat wholesaler Spanghero as a major culprit. (AP Photo/Jacques Brinon)
By JILL LAWLESS
Associated Press /
February 15, 2013
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British officials have said that horses slaughtered in Britain after being treated with the equine painkiller phenylbutazone, or bute, may have made their way into the human food chain in France. Bute is banned for human use because in rare cases it causes severe side effects, but veterinary experts say there is little risk from consuming small amounts in horsemeat.
ARE AUTHORITES ON TOP OF THE PROBLEM?
Europol, the European Union police agency, is coordinating a continent-wide fraud investigation, and at an emergency meeting on Friday the EU approved a plan to conduct random DNA tests to check for horsemeat, and also to check for the presence of bute.
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.
Critics say the food supply chain is too complicated and lightly policed to be truly secure.
But the European Union’s health commissioner, Tonio Borg, said French authorities’ identification and suspension of Spanghero demonstrated ‘‘that traceability of food in the EU works.’’
‘‘Consumers must be assured that everything will be done at the EU level to restore, as soon as possible, their confidence in the products on our markets,’’ Borg said.
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Associated Press writers Lori Hinnant in Paris, Don Melvin in Brussels, Mike Corder in Amsterdam and Karl Ritter in Stockholm contributed to this report.
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