AMSTERDAM, The Netherlands (Reuters) — Dutch food safety authorities have ordered five Dutch companies to recall 11,000 kilograms of improperly labelled French horse meat that was turned into food products in the Netherlands.
However, the country’s economic affairs ministry said the food had been delivered via Belgium to the Netherlands between January and October and had probably been consumed.
The meat was improperly labelled as beef and was not fit for human consumption, the ministry said in the letter to parliament.
The recall in the Netherlands follows the arrest last month of 21 cattle traders, butchers and veterinarians in France on suspicion of illegally selling 200 horses from the sports and pharmaceutical industries.
Read Also
Farming Smarter receives financial boost from Alberta government for potato research
Farming Smarter near Lethbridge got a boost to its research equipment, thanks to the Alberta government’s increase in funding for research associations.
The horse meat trading scandal first broke last January when horse DNA was found in frozen burgers sold in Irish and British supermarkets and involved traders and abattoirs from Romania to the Netherlands.
The Dutch said the decision on the latest recall was taken in late December after a notification was received from the European Commission’s Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed.
There was no explanation of the gap between notification and recall, but the Dutch parliament was in recess in late December.
The Dutch food safety board was attempting to trace the meat “and has contacted the companies involved and requested that they pull the meat from the market,” it said.
“They will request that their clients pull the products from the stores if that is possible.”
