The Government’s food watchdog will ask UK consumers how much horse or other species of animal would be “acceptable” to find in their food products.
In the wake of the horsemeat scandal, the Food Standards Agency has said it will ask the public what level of contamination in meat is “achievable, detectable and acceptable”. Catherine Brown, chief executive of the Food Standards Agency, has said that citizens’ forums are being set up by her organisation to gauge the “consumer acceptability” of meat products in UK shops being contaminated with low levels of other species’ DNA.
Mary Creagh, the shadow environment secretary, described the move as “strange” and said we “shouldn’t be processing any horse” in the UK. Many of the UK’s biggest food firms and supermarkets have recalled beef products after tests found they contained horse DNA. Miss Brown said that the FSA identified 20 food products in the UK “affected by what we have described as gross contamination with horse”.
However, she said there have been other cases of “trace contamination”, where “very low levels of other species, including port and horse, have been found in beef products”.
The FSA now wants to ask consumers whether they are happy to eat products with those trace contaminations of other species, Miss Brown said.
She said that trace contaminations can occur is a processing plant dealing with more than one species even if there is “thorough cleaning and good hygene practice”.