ABP Food: ‘We’ve found source of burger horse meat’
The ABP Food Group claimed to have found the source of the horse meat in the burgers produced at its Silvercrest Foods site in Ireland and has stopped production at the plant in County Monaghan.
Silvercrest said the contaminated product came from one of its third-party EU suppliers.
A statement released on the company’s website on January 17, said: “Following receipt of this evening’s Irish Department of Agriculture results, we believe that we have established the source of the contaminated material to one of these [Silvercrest, Liffey Meats and Dalepak Hambleton] suppliers.”
The statement did not name the supplier of the contaminated meat. The firm added it will introduce a new testing regime for all meat products, including DNA testing.
There is some disagreement over whether the presence of horse meat in the burgers is not a food safety issue.
The Society of Chief Officers of Environmental Health in Scotland said there was “no way of telling whether the meat is safe to eat”.