| Horse meat in burgers traced to Polish suppliers
Irish food authorities confirm suppliers were responsible for equine DNA found in Tesco and other products
Investigations are continuing into how horse DNA contaminated beefburgers made at a British plant, after Irish authorities confirmed that Polish suppliers were responsible for equine material found in Tesco and other products.
The UK Food Standards Agency said inquiries concentrated on supplies sent to the Dalepak Hambleton plant in North Yorkshire before last October.
Tests on samples collected this month were negative.
The agency did not know if raw ingredients used at Dalepak were from the same suppliers as those identified by the Irish agriculture minister Simon Coveney as being responsible for contamination of burgers made at Silvercrest in County Monaghan, one of Europe’s biggest burger plants and responsible for making 200 million burgers a year, including Tesco’s.
Silvercrest and Dalepak are owned by ABP Foods. They and another Irish plant, Liffey Meats, were implicated earlier this month caused by food standards checks late last year. Follow- up tests on burger sam- ples from Liffey Meats made by the Irish government gave that plant the all- clear last week.
Products made for Tesco, Lidl, Aldi and Iceland were found to have horse DNA, although it was the 29 per cent equine DNA in one sample from a Tesco burger made at Silver- crest that sparked further investigations by Irish and UK authorities.
More than 10 million burgers are thought to have been removed from sale, although authorities have said they posed no threat to human health.