Latest European horsemeat scandal reaches Sweden
The country’s National Food Authority (NFA) said the meat was imported by Swedish company A-Key from a Belgian supplier and delivered to meat processor Pärsons, which was at the time a subsidiary of Scan’s.
Belgian food safety authority AFSA revealed last month that the supplier in question had unknowingly imported 17.5t of illegal horsemeat from France and integrated it into a larger consignment of 82t of horsemeat. AFSA said the majority (63.3t) of this meat was exported to Europe, including Sweden, while 1.6t was sold fresh in Belgium in February and March 2013. A further 16.8t was frozen and has been seized by AFSA officials.
Although the majority of the horsemeat in the consignment was thought to be legal, so far AFSA has been unable to establish exactly where the illegal French horsemeat ended up.
The NFA said that A-Key was working with the Belgian firm to establish whether its shipment could have contained any of the illegal meat. However, NFA head Jan Sjögren stressed that even if it did, there was “no suspicion that the meat would be dangerous to eat”.
French fraud
French authorities revealed in mid-December that hundreds of horses had been sold into the food chain with falsified veterinary papers. At least 60 of these were traced back to drug company Sanofi, which had used the animals to develop serums against rabies, tetanus and poisons.
Sanofi has been cleared of any involvement in the scandal, which has seen 21 people arrested, including veterinarians, abattoir owners and meat traders. Both the French authorities and Sanofi have claimed that despite being declared as unfit for human consumption, the horsemeat should poses no risk to human health, because the animals were used to provide blood, rather than to test drugs.
