Dead GN horses linked to food controversy
London – The owner of a slaughterhouse that disposes of horses fatally injured during the Grand National became the first person yesterday to be arrested by police investigating horse contamination of beef products.
Peter Boddy, 63, was arrested on suspicion of fraud after being accused by the Food Standards Agency (FSA) of providing horsemeat for use in beefburgers and kebabs sold in Britain.
Aintree Racecourse in Liverpool confirmed that the Peter Boddy Slaughterhouse in Todmorden, West Yorkshire, had the contract to remove fatally injured horses. During last year’s Grand National, Synchronised, the joint favourite, and According to Pete were both put down after falls. Four horses died at the meeting in 2011. A racecourse spokesman said: ‘‘We are as confident as we possibly can be that no unfit meat ever reaches human food.’’
Dafydd Raw-Rees, 64, owner of the Farmbox Meats processing plant in Aberystwyth, and a second man, 42, were arrested on suspicion of fraud.
Andrew Rhodes, the FSA’s director of operations, suspended work at both plants, saying: ‘‘I was shocked to uncover what appears to be a blatant misleading of consumers.’’
The watchdog will reveal today the first results of tests of beef in ready meals after the withdrawal of millions of packets across Europe found to contain horsemeat. It said yesterday that no meals in Britain had yet tested positive for the veterinary drug phenylbutazone, also known as bute, which is banned from food because of its risk to human health.
But the FSA admitted that hundreds of contaminated horses were probably exported from Britain for human consumption each year before new controls were introduced this week stopping carcasses leaving until test results for bute were received.
Meat from six British horses contaminated with bute was exported to France during the first week of this month despite stricter controls being put in place, the FSA said.
The authorities in Britain and France are now desperately trying to locate three of the carcasses exported from a slaughterhouse in Taunton.
Catherine Brown, chief executive of the FSA, said that it was clear that criminal activity had occurred as horse ‘‘passports’’ must record what veterinary medicines a horse had received. The watchdog increased testing of carcasses last year after intelligence from abattoirs suggested bute was getting into the food chain. Sample tests showed 5 per cent of the 9000 carcasses exported last year contained bute.
Dame Sally Davies, the Chief Medical Officer, said that although the drug was linked to side-effects in patients taking it for arthritis, the risk was very low. ‘‘If you ate 100 per cent horse burgers of 250g, you would have to eat, in one day, more than 500 or 600 to get to a human dose,’’ she said.
British supermarket Asda withdrew bottles of 500g beef bolognese sauce yesterday after they became the first fresh beef product to test positive for horse DNA.
Rangeland Foods said it was withdrawing some batches of frozen burgers made in September at its factory in Ireland, after beef supplied from Poland was found to contain up to 30 per cent horse.
A French supplier was accused passing off 750 tonnes of Cyprus horsemeat as beef that was used in ready meals sold by Tesco and Aldi.