There’s been something of a fuss of late over horse meat being found in frozen foods in the United Kingdom. In some parts of the world, horse meat’s a perfectly acceptable thing to dine on, but it’s considered taboo in many others. In addition to that, there are certain rules and regulations that require food to be accurately labelled. Calling something that’s between 60% and 100% horse meat “beef” is misleading at best. Even so, the U.K.’s Food Standards Agency assures us all that just because horse meat was found in a little frozen food, it doesn’t mean all frozen food has a little horse meat.
This week saw Findus, a producer and retailer of frozen food, test 18 of their beef lasagna products after a third-party French supplier told the company they had concerns that it didn’t “conform to specification.” Turns out, those products sure didn’t conform to specification! Findus found 11 “beef” meals that had between 60% and 100% horse meat in them.
Yum.
Findus has apologized for the contamination, and the Food Standards Agency seems to think that everyone should just keep eating other frozen meals like nothing’s happened. Here’s a snippet of their statement on the matter:
People have been asking whether it is safe to eat any frozen meat products at the moment. There is no reason to suspect that there’s any health issue with frozen food in general, and we wouldn’t advise people to stop eating it.
It’s not like they’re about to disavow an entire industry, of course. That doesn’t mean there aren’t other products out there with a whole lot of horse meat in them, but frozen meals should be fine in general.
(Food Standards Agency via BBC News, image via OZinOH)
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