Irish food safety chiefs allegedly knew about the horse meat scandal for ten weeks before they started to carry out tests and investigate the issue.
According to a report in the Mail on Sunday officials have repeatedly insisted that horse meat was only found in the food chain after some random inspections were carried out at plants in early November.
However, Owen Paterson, the British Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has admitted that Irish officials received a tip-off about the possible contamination weeks before they began testing beef products for horse DNA.
The information came to light last week during an exchange in the House of Commons in the UK. Mr Paterson reportedly told MPs:
“The reason the Irish agency picked up this issue in the Irish plant was that it had local intelligence that there was a prolem. That is why it did a random check – I cleared this with the Irish Agriculture Minister Simon Coveney.”
Dozens of frozen beef products have already been recalled due to contamination
According to reports, Irish food safety officials had test results that indicated strong traces of horse meat in beef on November 30th of last year. However, rather than raising the alarm, they decided to sit on the results and order more tests instead.
“What has happened is sloppiness at best and criminality at worst. We have found that in the areas where food was contaminated with products which shouldn’t have been there, it was deliberate. That is unacceptable,” said Philip Clarke, the chief executive of Tesco (Tesco’s own-brand frozen beef burgers were found to be contaminated with 29 per cent horse meat).
The Irish Food Safety Authority has stated that it did not act on any kind of tip-off and that it cannot comment on “conversations between Ministers.” Meanwhile, the Department of Agriculture declined to comment on the report.
It is expected that tougher controls on food consignments traded within the European Union will be agreed upon before the end of the month. As it stands, the horse meat scandal has already spread to 12 EU countries.
