Hi °C | Lo °C JUST three weeks ago, Agriculture Minister Simon Coveney announced that the investigation into horse meat in burgers was "winding down" – but that certainly wasn't the case this week.
From yesterday's decision to undertake Europe-wide DNA tests of meat to criminal arrests and the involvement of Europol, the fallout from the horse-meat crisis continues to widen.
And that's before you even mention the spat between two Irish food giants about who is to blame for a bolognese sauce testing positive for horse DNA.
This week started with raids on a Yorkshire slaughterhouse and a Welsh meat factory over suspected supply of horse meat to the beef trade.
This was later followed by a number of arrests and also by further raids on other premises in Hull and Tottenham.
Germany also became the latest in a long list of countries to withdraw lasagnes from some of its supermarkets.
Mr Coveney then convened crisis talks in Brussels to finally come up with some sort of co-ordinated Europe-wide response to the scandal.
Although loudly insisting there was no food safety problem as nobody had gotten ill or died from eating horse meat, EU Health Commissioner Tonio Borg agreed measures were needed to reassure consumers and get to the bottom of the fraud.
Europol was drafted in to co-ordinate the investigation and try to get to the root of the transnational scam engulfing the food chain.
The EU agreed that 2,500 DNA tests would be carried out next month, while 4,000 tests on horse carcasses would also be carried out to find out if the carcinogenic animal medicine bute is present.
Also this week, the Food Safety Authority of Ireland revealed that burgers supplied by Rangeland Foods in Monaghan had been found to contain up to 30pc horse meat.
Catering company Compass withdrew burgers supplied to work canteens and other outlets throughout Ireland, including two schools in Northern Ireland.
UK supermarket giant Asda then delivered the bombshell that horse DNA had been found in fresh bolognese sauce supplied by Irish food giant Greencore – which is headed up by Simon Coveney's brother, Patrick.
Greencore said the meat used had come from ABP Nenagh – owned by beef baron Larry Goodman.
But the latter has firmly denied it is the source of the horse meat.
The only slightly better news this week was the announcement by the Food Standards Agency (FSA) in Britain that just 1pc of products tested there had proven positive for horse DNA.
Some 29 out of 2,500 products contained horse DNA, and all these had already been in the public domain, it said.
However, the FSA wasn't cracking open the champagne as a result as it noted that another 950 tests were still pending and there could still be further positive results.
Irish Independent
