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Cabinet minister Owen Paterson came under fire last night after a firm at the centre of the horse meat scandal wasn’t invited to his crisis summit.
Embarrassed officials admitted that frozen food giant Findus, whose lasagne ready meals were found to contain between 60 and 100 per cent horse meat, was left out of the talks involving ministers, supermarkets and food regulators.
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs revealed that Mr Paterson – summoned back from his Shropshire constituency by Downing Street to deal with the drama – had only invited “key players” like supermarkets including Tesco and Sainsbury’s.
Last night Labour MP Tom Watson said: “I called on Friday for Findus to be invited to this emergency summit.
As the scandal threatened to throw Britain’s £75billion food industry deeper into crisis, Shadow Environment Secretary Mary Creagh warned the fiasco was “just the tip of the iceberg”.
And The Sunday Mirror can reveal that The Restaurant Group, which owns the Garfunkel’s and Frankie & Benny’s chains, has withdrawn thousands of burgers from its restaurants as a precaution.
UK and French investigators believe suppliers to British food firms and shops may have deliberately substituted horse meat for beef in products to cut costs.
It has emerged that Food Standards Agency officials last tested products for horse meat 10 years ago. They have recently been more concerned with checking that a particular type of steak was from a particular breed of cattle.
Mr Paterson yesterday blamed the crisis on “an international criminal conspiracy” and vowed to prosecute offenders. And he warned consumers to expect “more bad results” when latest test results are revealed on Friday.
He has ordered 28 local authorities to test 230 food samples from shops, restaurants, takeaways and wholesalers. But they will only look for horse and pork DNA, so other rogue meats could still escape detection.
Mr Paterson vowed to track down European suppliers responsible for contaminating the food chain and said the Government would “push for the strongest possible action, including prosecution if there was criminal activity”.
But he stressed that shops and supermarkets should be held responsible for what they sold, saying: “It is down to them to buy from manufacturers whose procedures they trust.”
He revealed that it was agreed at the summit that businesses would introduce a new testing regime with results reported to the FSA every three months.
“We have a total coalition of interests with the farming industry, the food industry and the retailers,” he said.
“We really want to get to the bottom of this problem.”
Discount supermarket Aldi yesterday followed Findus by withdrawing two of its ready meal ranges after they were found to contain between 30 and 100 per cent horse meat.
The meals had been supplied by French company Comigel, also used by Findus. Comigel says the horse meat came from an abattoir in Romania. And it has also emerged that another French food supplier caught up in the scandal, Spanghero, was at the centre of an E.coli scareless than two years ago.
Spanghero is now under investigation for importing horse meat from Romania, which was then labelled as beef. It was exported to Comigel’s Luxembourg factory and eventually sold on to UK supermarkets, including Aldi.
Officials in Paris confirmed Spanghero had to withdraw 12 tonnes of minced beef in June 2011 because of suspected E.coli. The firm yesterday insisted it had been given a clean bill of health.
Meanwhile Findus chairman Dale Morrison, 64, has faced new accusations that he failed to act swiftly enoughto recall the firm’s “horse meat” lasagnes.
Angry bosses of Findus – which is part-owned by private equity firm Lion Capital, whose millionaire boss is 44-year-old polo player Lyndon Lea – laid the blame for its horse meat products on its foreign suppliers.
Spokesman Henrik Nyberg said: “We had been promised meat of a certain quality and a certain origin. We will talk to Comigel to try to figure out if they were also cheated.
“We don’t know how this happened, if it is fraud or not. We have removed the company Spanghero from our list of suppliers. They will not be supplying meat to us again.”
A company spokesman added: “Findus is taking legal advice about the grounds for pursuing a case against its suppliers regarding what they believe is their suppliers’ failure to meet contractual obligations about product integrity.
“The early results from Findus UK’s internal investigation strongly suggests that the horse meat contamination in lasagne was not accidental.”
Meanwhile The Restaurant Group, which has 400 outlets, confirmed it had withdrawn all burgers supplied by Irish manufacturer Rangeland Foods, the company at the heart of the scandal, two weeks ago.
But it was not until last Monday that the company announced it had discovered that a batch of meat contained traces of horse meat.
A spokesman added: “While Rangeland has confirmed that the contaminated batch did not enter their production process, TRG has destroyed, as a precaution, all products sourced from Rangeland and now only sources burgers from UK suppliers.
“All beef burgers have been tested to confirm they are clear of equine DNA.”
Labour MP Mary Creagh: Ministers must get a grip of the horse meat scandal.. NOW
IT is clear that our food safety checks are simply not up to scratch and complacent ministers have been asleep at the wheel.
Compare the British approach with that of the Irish food authorities, who have been ahead of us every step of the way, calling in police when a second batch of horse meat was found.
PA
Millions of burgers have been pulled off shelves, yet stores are still waiting to hear whether ministers want them tested.
If they had been tested when they were withdrawn, ministers would be able to reassure us, but because they were paralysed by fear or incompetence, we are still in the dark. We can’t wait until April for the results.
What started as an isolated incident is starting to look like widespread criminal adulteration.
Worried insiders warn me this is just the tip of the iceberg. I’m worried that criminals across Europe have been dumping cheap horse meat into the British food chain to make a quick buck, and on Friday I passed information about British firms who are potentially involved to the police.
If our food safety system cannot tell us if food is fit for consumption, then it is not fit for purpose.
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