- LONDON (Reuters) - Food standards
officers say they will test salamis after discovering consumers were unwittingly
eating horse meat.
-
- The Food Standards Agency, an independent food safety
watchdog, said it would test more than a hundred salamis and other processed
meats, after an informal survey earlier this year found three out of 24
products tested contained horse meat which had not been declared as an
ingredient.
-
-
- Of the three products found to contain horse meat, two
came from Belgium and the third from Italy.
-
-
- "We do not yet know the scale of the problem but
we want to find out," said the agency's head of food labelling, Rosemary
Hignett. "Some people may prefer not to eat these products, even though
food safety is not the issue and they are often traditional recipes."
-
-
- Horse meat is not illegal, but failing to label products
correctly breaks labelling laws.
-
-
- Hignett said local councils across Britain would collect
samples of meats including pastrami and chorizo from supermarkets and over
the next few months.
-
- Food standards officers said they would also conduct
tests to find out if any products contained donkey meat.
-
- Copyright © 2003 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
Republication or redissemination of the contents
- of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written
consent of Reuters Limited.
|
