Hi °C | Lo °C CHICKEN and pork meals could also end up being tested for horse meat because of fears that the current scandal could be even wider than originally feared.
As the authorities in Britain raided two more meat plants, the Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI) said it planned to draw up new protocols for testing meat under the regime announced by Agriculture Minister Simon Coveney this week.
However, while the initial focus was on beef products, that could now be expanded to cover other meat products as well, an FSAI spokesperson said.
"We are doing things one thing at a time, but we could broaden it out to include other processed meats," she said.
This follows comments by the head of the British Food Standards Agency (FSA) that retailers may now have to test a wider range of meat products after the discovery of horse meat in processed food.
FSA chief executive Catherine Brown said: "At the moment we are getting them first to focus on 'comminuted' beef, meatballs, spaghetti, beef burgers. But there is a real sense from (the) industry that they are thinking about the wider food chain."
Raided
The FSA said last night that it, along with police, had raided a slaughterhouse in West Yorkshire and a meat company in Aberystwyth, Wales, as part of the probe.
Production had been halted at these plants and paperwork seized as the FSA investigated the possible supply of horse carcases purporting to be beef for kebabs and burgers.
Tesco's Everyday Value frozen spaghetti bolognese meals were the latest to be discovered to contain high levels of horse meat, while other ready meals from Findus, Aldi and Tesco were withdrawn last week for the same reason.
Irish Independent
