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Subscribe to RSSCzech Republic officials say traces of horse meat were discovered in frozen packages of meatballs sent to their country for sale at furniture giant Ikea. NBCNews.com's Dara Brown reports.
Traces of horse have been found in meatballs labeled as beef and pork for Swedish global furniture giant Ikea, according to authorities in the Czech Republic.
The horse meat was found in one-kilogram packs of frozen meat balls made in Sweden and shipped to the Czech Republic for sale in Ikea stores there, the Czech State Veterinary Administration said.
It is the latest discovery in a deepening scandal over the discovery of horse meat in ready meals sold as beef in supermarkets in Ireland, the UK and other European countries.
Markus Schreiber / AP, file
Ikea furniture stores also sell typical Swedish food.
A total of 1,675 pounds of the meatballs were stopped from reaching the shelves.
Ikea's furniture stores feature restaurants and also sell food typical of the company's home country, including the so-called Kottbullar meat balls.
It was not immediately clear whether Ikea exported the same product to other countries. Calls seeking comment from Ikea in Sweden were not immediately returned Monday.
The Czech authority also found horse meat in beef burgers imported from Poland during random tests of food products.
Authorities across Europe have started doing random DNA checks after traces of horse meat turned up in frozen supermarket meals such as burgers and lasagna beginning last month.
The European Union's agriculture ministers gathered in Brussels Monday to discuss the widening scandal's fallout, with some member states pressing for tougher rules to regain consumer confidence.
The 27-nation bloc must agree on binding origin disclosures for food product ingredients, starting with a better labeling of meat products, German agriculture minister Ilse Aigner said.
"Consumers have every right to the greatest-possible transparency," she insisted.
From lasagna and burgers to children's sweets containing gelatin, horse meat has been discovered in a wide variety of "beef" products, leaving Europeans to wonder what they're really eating. NBC's Keir Simmons reports.
The scandal began in Ireland in mid-January when the country's announced the results of its first-ever DNA tests on beef products. It tested frozen beef burgers taken from store shelves and found that more than a third of brands at five supermarkets contained at least a trace of horse. The sample of one brand sold by British supermarket kingpin Tesco was more than a quarter horse.
Such discoveries have spread like wildfire across Europe as governments, supermarkets, meat traders and processors began their own DNA testing of products labeled beef and have been forced to withdraw tens of millions of products from store shelves.
More than a dozen nations have detected horse flesh in processed products such as factory-made burger patties, lasagnas, meat pies and meat-filled pastas. The investigations have been complicated by elaborate supply chains involving multiple cross-border middlemen.
Related:
Horse meat in the US? Unlikely, but tests are rare
'Fraud on a massive scale': Europe's horse meat scandal keeps on growing
'Criminal conspiracy' blamed for European horse-in-burger scandal
This story was originally published on Mon Feb 25, 2013 6:57 AM EST
Leave a Comment:
It's Obama's fault!
Suspected this all along.
Dis here be Obama's fault nah
Keep eating your dead animals and whatever they ate, plus any diseases they had...GROSS!!!
Hear the pig crap spinach is nice this time of year.
Was there a spike in horse theft cases in Czech villages where such case were not solved? Did the Europol reject request for assistance because it was about horse theft lots of incident cases? How was that forgotten? anyone? Ah see no horse owner victims remember either? atlease someone in europol? nope?
ah see, czech government shut it down because it was "embarassing"and prefer to leave cczech citizens in the dark? for whom?
Who cares! What is horse meat poisonous??!
Yes.
depends on how to believe in LAW. In EU food insdustry, they have law regulating how a cow is to be fed for purpose of husbandry for meat. They have something call ban drugs in livestock feed. So, mixing horsemeat into beef production without public consent means ...duh how is law enforce?
Even worse, one's favorite pet horse gets stolen and fed to the scheme for pure "secret" money in the same manner? Because it is a "secret" and big chuck of population got the know and got involve too for more secret money making scheme. Steal a horse and sale on the cheap! duh, where's the evidence now? duh it's in the tummy.
So, to answer your question, depends on the tainted horse being pump up with antibiotic for purpose of health to run to death in a racetrack before sold to slaughter house.
Nonsense. In EU law, this is to prevent imports from outside the EU, nothing more. As long as a horse died of natural causes or at least unexplained causes within the EU, they couldn't give a rats butt if it ends up in your lasagna. Horse meat is turning up everywhere in the EU but they are protected from imported horse meat.
Who cares! As long as that package doesn't say "assembly required"!!
They are meatballs!!! Key word is MEAT! What does one expect to find in MEATballs? If they were 100% beef woudln't they be called BEEFballs? I personally would not eat meatballs or any other product containing horse meat, but I would prefer to know it is in there so I can avoid it. I guess horse meat is a common holiday tradition in Sweden.
In the end, does it really matter if goat, cow, horse, chicken, hog, fish, dog or cat......what ever the animal one is eating the final price that has been paid with their life.
Nobody cares they're called meatballs. They just want to know what kind. That's why they label the products like they do now. It's not the days of "The Jungle" of Upton Sinclair where they had rat and even human parts should one happened get cut off and fall into the meat vats. If they label it horse and then people buy it, that's no problem. You won't want to pay for gas for your car and get water, do you?
So, what's wrong with eating horse meat? The drugs you fools, the drugs. Horses are not raised as meat animals, therefore are commonly given classes of drugs not meant to be in our food chain. And, yes, those drugs have been found, recently in shipped horse meat. Isn't it odd that the news of that little find was not well publicized in Europe? So, eat up! I hope your cancer takes you out of the gene pool before you reproduce.
Why is the furniture store IKEA selling meatballs? Did they recycle Mr. Ed's barn?
Am I the only one that caught the unintended pun in this article?
"The sample of one brand sold by British supermarket kingpin Tesco was more than a quarter horse." "Quarter horse"? REALLY??? None of the idiots that are posting their random, ignorant crap on here even caught that? I began reading posts, but came across so many ignorant posts where some fools thought they were being witty, that I just gave up reading anymore because I found the lack of intelligence offensive.
I do, among many others, find the whole situation with these processing plants and the people who are making money on this quite disgusting though.
With the fine European socialism, they are lucky to get horse meat. What they need to watch for is when friends and neighbors start mysteriously disappearing and also avoid little green crackers.
Eat PETA members, they taste like frog legs
Why is it ok to torture and kill bovine and not horse? Just because they are cuter and we like them? It is not right to kill any animal for meat if you have other options.
Better to wait for then to die of old age, traffic accidents....
Melba, what's not right is you trying to make people think it is wrong to eat meat. If you don't want to eat meat, fine. But don't think you have a right to tell anyone else to not eat meat. It is none of your business what people eat.
Think about this. All the sudden everyone turns nuts and decides not to kill animals to eat. So, we let them all go and they head out on their own eating all the soy beans, corn, wheat and whatever else they can get. What is left for humans to eat? We couldn't bring ourselves to kill cows for grazing off all the grains we would need to survive. We'd all starve to death. Then the animals would starve to death because we wouldn't be feeding them our food anymore. LOL
citizen-xx, see India. Cows run rampant in the cities while people starve to death.
I heard someplace that there's often COW in hamburger meat too. That's disgusting - makes me puke. Those things belong out in the open pasture living a peaceful life.
I just hope my kids don't find out about that.
That moooves you does it?
Cows and pigs are ok but horse is out of the question? It's meat.
If we are not suppose to eat animals, why are they made out of meat?
Ikea's food has always been equestrianable.
Under Obama we better get used to eating whatever we can get.
toteu
She is done, she wants to continues feeling the the sweet narcissism. She can;t accept is over and need to re-profile and help the girls coming after her. She can't monopolize the show.Train them,be happy by fostering the new line behind her provided she is so sophisticated to understand that and has lots of empathy It is over. Go on in hiding for a while, don't expose self in public whining,lick your wounds ,recover and will be happy and helpful to other girls when you return. Give up your poisonous narcissism by seeking good one on one therapy. Be prepared to shop for a therapist a LOT and willing to Pay BIG CASH and no paper trail. Then you might have a chance to be useful. Be humble! It is over the way it was and you got to get used to it. If not, You have to retrieve in the dark,shadowing corners bent over your past won medals. Good luck with you crossroad !
#4 - Mon Feb 25, 2013 10:47 AM EST
??? Wrong thread, or seek help.
Traces? These "production line" outfits that make prepared foods are probably allowed more feces than whatever horse meat was found in the product. You'd be amazed how much garbage is allowed in processed foods right here in the USA. I can't imagine what is allowed as acceptable levels of stuff that can make you sick in other countries.
You think Horse meat is bad in European meatballs? Find out what "mechanically seperated" is and then go and see what some of your grocery items have in them. Like those shaped chicken patties and nuggets. Mechanically sperated chicken. How about hotdogs? If you ever seen a hot dog made, you would never eat another one. I'd rather eat horse and not know it than to eat most of the processed junk we gobble up by the ton in this country.
Honestly, who the hell cares. We eat cows, pigs, chickens, fish, lambs, animal eggs, and much more. We are humans, we like to eat grass AND we like to eat other animals. If we needed DNA tests to show there was horse in there, then it shouldn't be a big deal because we ate the damn thing and didn't notice anything except that our hunger was gone!
I believe the consumer should have accurate labels, but seriously , whats wrong with horse meat?
With Ikea there's always some assembly required.
Cow, pig, horse....who cares? What's the difference?
socorny1
Cow, pig, horse....who cares? What's the difference?
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One goes "Oink oink", one goes "Moooooooo" and one goes "Oh, Wilbur you did it again"