Organised criminal gangs operating internationally are suspected of playing a major role in the horsemeat scandal that has seen supermarket shelves cleared of a series of products and triggered concerns about the contamination of the UK's food chain.

Sources close to the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Food Standards Agency said it appeared that the contamination of beefburgers, lasagne and other products was the result of fraud that had an "international dimension".

Experts within the horse slaughter industry have told the Observer there is evidence that both Polish and Italian mafia gangs are running multimillion-pound scams to substitute horsemeat for beef during food production. There are claims that vets and other officials working within abattoirs and food production plants are intimidated into signing off meat as beef when it is in fact cheaper alternatives such as pork or horse.

In an attempt to reassure the public that Britain's food chain was not victim to systemic fraud, the environment secretary Owen Paterson on Saturday met representatives from the big four supermarkets, retail bodies and leading food producers to thrash out a plan to increase the amount of DNA testing of food.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2013/feb/09/horsemeat-scandal-international-fraud

The scandal over horsemeat sold as beef has spread to France, amid suspicions organised crime gangs could be behind a scam stretching all the way back to Romanian abattoirs.

The Romanian government is now investigating if horsemeat discovered in products including lasagne came from one of its abattoirs.

Meanwhile six French supermarket chains withdrew suspect frozen products from their shelves, following an earlier move by British retailers.

The British government suspects organised crime might be behind the meat substitution, but has ruled out a blanket ban on importing meat from European Union countries.

"It's completely wrong that a British consumer should go to a store, buy a product clearly marked beef, and find that it actually contains a cheaper product - horse," food minister Owen Paterson said

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-02-11/french-pull-horsemeat-products-off-shelves/4511130

A BAN on horses on Romanian roads may have triggered the "surge in the fraudulent sale of horsemeat" in Europe and may even have led to the introduction of donkey meat into the supply chain, a French politician said.

As the horsemeat scandal widened over the weekend, with processed beef products sold in as many as 16 European countries now thought to be contaminated with horsemeat, it was revealed that Comigel – the company that supplied the meat used in products withdrawn from British supermarkets – got its meat from a Romanian abattoir that slaughters both horses and cattle.

Read more: http://www.theweek.co.uk/europe/horsemeat-scandal/51442/romanian-road-rules-may-have-triggered-horsemeat-crisis#ixzz2KeywqBR0

French meat processing company Spanghero knowingly sold horsemeat labelled as beef, the French government has said.

Spanghero's licence is being suspended while a probe continues, agriculture minister Stephane Le Foll said.

The firm has denied the allegations, saying it only ever dealt in meat it believed to be beef.

A widening scandal over mislabelled horsemeat has affected at least 12 European countries.

In the UK, three people have been arrested on suspicion of fraud in connection with the sale of horsemeat.

Two suspects were detained at a meat processing plant near Aberystwyth in Wales, and a third was arrested at an abattoir in West Yorkshire.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-21464052

The BBC has learned that up to 7,000 unauthorised horse passports have been in circulation in the UK since 2008.

The documents were issued by an equine society after the government had withdrawn its right to grant passports, sources have said.

It has led to confusion at abattoirs when some of the animals were sent for slaughter.

Campaigners say it highlights the fact that the passport system is chaotic and subject to widespread abuse.

The horse passport system was introduced in 2005 in response to an EU directive aimed at ensuring animals destined for the food chain were drug-free.

In 2009, it was strengthened by the addition of a requirement that all foals should be micro-chipped as an additional safety measure.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21430330

British food safety authorities say about 1 per cent of the beef products they have tested so far contain horse meat.

The Food Standards Agency (FSA) tested 2,501 products and found 29 contained horse meat.

Testing covered only one-quarter of the entire range of available products, and did not look for contamination of less than 1 per cent.

"The overwhelming majority of beef products in this country do not contain horse," FSA chief Catherine Brown said.

"The examples we have had are totally unacceptable, but they are the exceptions."

All of the 29 products containing horsemeat have already been withdrawn from sale.

They include lasagne and spaghetti bolognese sold by Aldi supermarkets, burgers sold by Co-op stores, and burgers and spaghetti bolognese sold by Britain's leading supermarket chain Tesco.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-02-16/horse-meat-found-in-29-british-beef-products/4522694

Inquiry ordered after FSA official says he raised illegal horsemeat alarm in 2011

Agriculture minister was told that meat passport scheme was not working, claims former manager

Oliver Wright

The Government is tonight urgently investigating allegations that ministers were alerted as long ago as 2011 that illegal horsemeat was entering the food chain.

John Young, a former manager at the Meat Hygiene Service, which is now part of the Food Standards Agency (FSA), said he helped draft a warning letter to the former agriculture minister Sir Jim Paice. In it, the minister was told that the Government’s passport scheme – designed to prevent horse meat containing harmful drugs entering the food chain – was not working.

“Defra gave nearly 80 organisations the authority to produce passports and some of them are little better than children could produce,” he said. “It’s a complete mess.”

He claimed that as a result of the lax passport system there was no way of telling whether horses had been given the potentially dangerous anti-inflammatory drug phenylbutazone, known as “bute”, before being slaughtered – and entering the human food chain either legally or illegally.

The Environment Secretary Owen Paterson said he had asked the FSA to go back through its records to establish what warning had been given.

Sir Jim said he had been unaware of any warning at the time, telling the Sunday Times: “If this information was in Defra and was not being acted upon, it warrants further investigation. I would like to know why on earth I was not being told about it.”

Mr Paterson, who will hold a progress meeting with supermarkets and food suppliers tomorrow, said: “The problem we have is that under [European] regulation, food safety law is laid down by the Commission and too much of it is based on trust, and there has not been enough testing. I have to work with the system that I have inherited.

“I want to have a proper look at the system and within the constraints of European law I want to make sure that we do reintroduce more targeted testing and more random testing of products.”

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/inquiry-ordered-after-fsa-official-says-he-raised-illegal-horsemeat-alarm-in-2011-8498414.html#

Nestle, the world's biggest food company, has removed beef pasta meals from shelves in Italy and Spain after tests revealed traces of horse DNA.

The Swiss-based firm has halted deliveries of products containing meat from a German supplier.

Nestle is the latest in a string of major food producers to find traces of horsemeat in beef meals.

A spokesman for the company said levels of horse DNA were very low but above 1%.

Like humor, the key to successful politics is frequently timing. That may explain why a recent food policy decision by European Union officials is going over like a lead balloon.

On Feb.14, members of the E.U.’s executive body took a break from Europe’s horsemeat-impersonating-beef scandal to reauthorize a type of animal feed that was banned in 1997 to battle Mad Cow disease—an illness that infected nearly 500,000 animals in Europe, and killed around 200 people. Observers now grimly marvel at Mad Cow-era precautions being rolled back at the very moment the horsemeat flap is raising new concerns about the safety of Europe’s food industry.

Read more: http://world.time.com/2013/02/19/as-the-horsemeat-hysteria-spreads-e-u-opens-a-mad-cow-can-of-worms/#ixzz2LOuL13rQ

Hello? I wuz up there early with the controversy: see picture and story below it at top...

Of course one has to understand that "reauthorising a type of animal feed" controversy is only due to the composition of that feed that was (is) made of animal parts, including dead horses. So what do you do with dead horses when you can't feed them to cows anymore?... Ask a silly question and end up with horse-meat lasagna labelled as BEEF... Cows are HERBIVORES... They eat GRASS... 

Supermarket chain Asda said on Tuesday that it was recalling its range of budget corned beef after low levels of the veterinary pain killer phenylbutazone – known as bute – were detected.

The Food Standards Agency said the retailer had confirmed that the drug was detected in 340g tins of Asda Smart Price Corned Beef that had previously been found to contain traces of horsemeat.

The discovery is the first confirmation that products containing the drug have been sold in the UK after concerns were raised in the wake of thehorsemeat scandal. Previously, eight horse carcasses slaughtered in the UK for consumption tested positive for bute, but the meat was exported.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/apr/09/veterinary-drug-bute-asda-corne...

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The corned beef had a headache and was dispatched overseas...