It has no doubt come as a surprise to members of the public that traces of horse meat and pig meat have been found in ‘100% beef burgers’ sold by a number of UK high street retailers and that in one case a level of 29% horse meat was found.
The FSA has launched an investigation and is working with retailers and the food industry to see how this happened.
One thing that has not come as a surprise to scientists, is the sophistication of the testing techniques used to detect the presence of horse and pig.
The testing of food authenticity using DNA-based techniques such as the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is well established in the UK and many official control laboratories and commercial laboratories are accredited to carry out such work.
The FSA has funded a number of projects within this complex analytical area, details of which are available on the Agency website.
One piece of FSA-funded research (project Q01083) helped advance a method for identifying duck, pheasant, venison, horse, donkey and wild boar in meat products.
In 2003, the Agency carried out a survey to detect the presence of horsemeat or donkey meat in salami and salami-type products. A total of 158 types of salami and salami-type products were sampled, including chorizos, mortadella and saucisson produced in several different European countries. Samples were collected from a range of retail and wholesale catering outlets in 30 regions across the UK. Results of DNA analysis showed that only one chorizo sample contained traces of horsemeat. In this case it was a French manufacturer and it was believed that the traces had been caused by cross-contamination.
It should also be noted that, unlike the recent Irish study, no quantitative results were determined and the Agency report simply provided data on the presence/absence of horsemeat.
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BA Festival of Science
Dear Andrew,
thank you for the update on PCR and controls.
Traces in most cases, ok, but 29% (almost one 3rd!) is not a trace, something fundamentally wrong is taking place in this unit...
The irony is that there is no compact food legislation that we can use against these companies to be fined and prosecuted.
Is horse meat a hazard in HACCP? In the legislative fringes, you might find something (e.g. poor application of traceability), but this scandal proves a single thing: that we are not learning from the mistakes of the past...
p.s. here is a relevant story from Greece that happened in 2005...
http://www.environmentfood.blogspot.gr/2013/01/what-horse.html
Posted by yannis zabetakis on January 18, 2013 at 08:17 AM GMT #
Dear Andrew,
Thank you for publishing this blog. It is clear now tht this is not a health and safety issue, rather a shame that consumers have been mislead in regards to what is in their food. At the food processing level, in what manner could ISO 9001 helped prevent this contamination from happening, and how can ISO 9001 prevent this from happening?
Posted by Andrew Gallagher on January 19, 2013 at 01:13 AM GMT #
Dear Andrew
I fail to see how the FSA can make the bold statement that the presence of horse meat in a burger “poses no threat to food safety or health”. Our excellent meat hygiene controls post BSE do enable that sort of statement to be made about beef for sure but nobody even knows the exact source of the horse flesh present as a contaminant in the retailer branded burgers whether at 29%, 2.9% or 0.29%. Had this equine material been killed in an approved slaughterhouse where the sort of controls in place are those we in the UK and Ireland would recognise as appropriate? Could it have been slaughtered in an unapproved establishment with less robust controls? Or even (worse) could it have emanated from fallen stock, “knacker” source or worse? Frankly if we don’t yet know the origin nobody (not even the FSA) is in a position at this stage to make sweeping statements about its safety. Labelling issues to one side - the public will be less than reassured about the FSA's reputation if investigations lead to a conclusion that the source of the horse flesh was less than rock solid.
Posted by Richard Ratcliffe on January 19, 2013 at 10:03 AM GMT #
Andrew,
I became involved in a case of this kind over 20 years ago. Then the substitute for beef was Kangaroo meat obviously from Australia. Apparently some enterprising ex-Vietnam vets had taken to the skies in a helicopter with machine guns and disposed of some problem 'Roos'. The meat was imported to the UK as pet food and diverted to the human food chain. Traceability was not so well established then, but we luckily were able to show discrepancies between physical product stock reconciliation and financial documentation for bona fide invoiced beef supplies.
As with horse, kangaroo meat is theoretically safe for human consumption...but only if slaughtering and other processes in place meet the required standards. These kangaroos were not slaughtered properly...they were not stunned or bled properly, so by definition they were not safe for human consumption. Unless and until the FSA knows exactly what the provenence of the current horse substitute is, it is surely premature for the FSA to issue 'reassuring' statements about the safety of the affected beefburgers. I hope they are safe.
But the premature assurances of safety will threaten the credibility of the Agency for many years if in the final analysis it is revealed that the slaughter procedures for the horses involved failed to meet human food standards.
Posted by Malcolm Kane on January 19, 2013 at 04:28 PM GMT #
The FSAI report clearly stated that the analyses involved detection of DNA, but subsequent discussions have assumed that the presence of DNA of a particular species correlates with the presence of meat from that species. According to strict food labelling legislation, the meat content of a product refers only to skeletal muscle – and undeclared blood and offal (ie organs such as heart, liver, lung and kidney) is not permitted. What may not be realised is that, since DNA is the same in all organs/tissues, DNA-based detection methods cannot distinguish between meat and other organs/tissues. Thus the claim that 29% horse meat is present in one of the burgers has not been substantiated; in other words, other horse organs/tissues (for example liver, heart, lung, blood etc) may be present. Of further interest is that John Humphreys, when introducing Professor Patrick Wall, Professor of Public Health, University College Dublin, on the Radio 4 Today programme on Jan 16th, indicated the surveillance was conducted because offal was suspected to be present in the samples. This begs the question- is offal present?
Although DNA-based methods cannot distinguish between organs/tissues, the good news is that tests are available to detect the presence of various offals and added blood in meat products. These tests have been developed over a number of years by the Food Authenticity Group at Nottingham Trent University, partly funded by the Food Standards Agency and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. The tests are based on the detection of specific proteins which distinguish between skeletal muscle and heart/liver/blood etc. and can be used on both fresh and processed foods. The Nottingham Trent University group would welcome the opportunity to apply their tests to establish the identity of the horse tissue/organ present in the burger containing the highest level of horse DNA, and to test for the undeclared addition of offal and blood in other products.
Posted by Professor Ellen Billett on January 19, 2013 at 05:37 PM GMT #
Where can we find the details of the approved establishments that supplied the meat to the manufacturers ?
Posted by Martyn on January 19, 2013 at 07:24 PM GMT #
On 20 July 2010 the food authenticity programme was transferred from the Food Standards Agency (FSA) to Defra along with food labelling and composition policy not related to food safety or nutrition. If the horse meat issue is not one of food safety, why is the FSA dealing with it - what is DEFRA doing?
http://www.defra.gov.uk/food-farm/food/standards/authenticity/
Posted by Carl on January 20, 2013 at 08:26 AM GMT #
Is this coincidence or what? Just the day before this story broke I was having a clear out and read works by several authors who made the point that the development of food law in the EU can be seen as an example of where a knee jerk reaction resulted in a missed opportunity. Their point was that in the aftermath of the various food crises, by concentrating on food safety rather than food quality we allowed ourselves to develop a regieme which encourages the development of obesity and all the other associated problems. If we had concentrated more on quality, then the safety issue whould have been addressed automatically. Is a beefburger with 29% horse meat enough to force a rethink? Probably not.
Posted by Jim on January 23, 2013 at 12:52 PM GMT #
Thanks to everyone who posted comments on this issue. I’ll try to deal with the main points as I see them.
First, there is the question of how the FSA can be sure that the burgers containing horse DNA posed no threat to food safety or health when we don’t know where the meat came from.
What we have said is that, on the basis of the evidence, there is no food safety risk to consumers from these products.
There is nothing about horsemeat that makes it any more or less safe than other meat products. The meat products were supplied to the retailers by approved establishments. The burgers that tested positive for horse DNA were tested by FSAI for the presence of phenylbutazone, a commonly used medicine in horses that is not allowed in the food chain, and all of the results were negative.
Nevertheless, we need to remain vigilant for any indication that this incident potentially creates a risk for consumer safety. And of course, irrespective of safety, it is completely unacceptable for a product labelled as a beef burger to have horse as 29% of its meat content, as was the case in one burger tested. We will consider carefully what this tells us about the effectiveness of the controls that are currently in place.
A second issue raised is who is responsible for checking the authenticity of products. The policy leadership for a number of activities in England that are relevant to this incident passed from the FSA to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) in 2010 – for example, food labelling, composition and authenticity. The FSA retains the policy in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and retains the lead responsibility for responding to incidents such as this.
This separation of responsibilities between departments in England is not unusual. It can work very effectively as long as all those involved are clear on their responsibilities and maintain regular dialogue. We have, therefore, worked closely with Defra and the health and rural affairs departments in Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland. Close cooperation has also been required with the Food Safety Authority of Ireland and, through them, with the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine in Ireland. The lead responsibility for investigating the processing plants in Ireland rests with the FSAI.
On the question of enforcement action in the UK, we will work closely with the local authorities concerned and consider the case for prosecution based on our usual criteria.
Posted by Andrew Wadge on January 24, 2013 at 04:23 PM GMT #