Tesco’s Budget Bolognese Meals Found with 60% Horsemeat
It's the second strike for Tesco in less than a week after the human tooth scandal, as it admits that the Tesco Everyday Value Spaghetti Bolognese contains at least 60% horsemeat.
Daily Mail reports that after the pull out from shelves, Tesco conducted several tests for traces of horsemeat. While there are only travel levels of around 1% in some samples, there were three products that had 60% horsemeat.
A company spokesman at Tesco, Tim Smith, said to The Guardian, "The source of the horsemeat is still under investigation by the relevant authorities. The level of contamination suggests that Comigel was not following the appropriate process for our Tesco product and we will not take food from their facility again."
The Tesco Everyday Value Spaghetti Bolognese is the second product from Tesco to have been found contaminated with horsemeat. Its first inclusion in the horsemeat incident involves the Tesco Everyday Value Frozen Beef Burgers, as well as a branded premium product Flamehouse Frozen Chargrilled Quarter Pounders.
Customers may now be wondering where the horsemeat even comes from for it to be included in the Tesco line-up of products. According to The Independent, it can be traced to two slaughterhouses in Romania, where the horsemeat was labeled beef, and shipped to a Dutch trader whose name was undisclosed.
The beef was then shipped to an unidentified Cypriot dealer, passing them to Poujol before it went through to Luxembourg. Here, it goes into the hands of Comigel, the processor of the meat and a major supplier of beef all over Europe.
Blame is now being passed around with the Secretary of State for the Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs Owen Paterson getting the brunt of it, with accusations of mishandled government crisis, reports Daily Mail.
As such, Paterson now decrees that testing should be conducted every three months, with companies obliged to notify the Food Standards Agency on the results.
According to BBC, he wanted to see "more testing of products for horse along the supply chain and that the industry must cooperate fully with the FSA on this."
The Tesco budget meal is a product of Comigel, a French company that first made headlines as the distributor of Findus. Findus is the brand of lasagna that made headlines as the first non-burger patty product to be contaminated with horsemeat.