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Photo: DPA

Horse meat scandal spreads to Germany

Published: 13 Feb 13 14:52 CET | Print version
Online: http://www.thelocal.de/society/20130213-47953.html

Evidence a horse meat scandal had spread to Germany emerged for the first time on Wednesday after EU authorities realized that falsely labelled lasagna had also been delivered to shops in at least one western German state.

The Consumer Protection Ministry in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) said that a Luxembourgian distributor has been delivering products thought to contain horse meat “on a large scale across Germany and NRW.”

Deliveries had been made between November 2012 and January 2013, not only to a wide range of supermarkets but also to other food production companies. The authorities were tipped off by EU investigators.

A spokeswoman from the ministry said that checks were underway to make sure that the products in question had been removed from the shelves and if they had not already, were in the process of being taken out of circulation.

“Consumer fraud is not a trivial offence,” the spokeswoman said, adding that the government representatives would be taking part in a special sitting of the European parliament on Wednesday evening.

DPA/DAPD/The Local/jcw

What do you think? Leave your comment below.


Your comments about this article:

17:54 February 13, 2013 by pjnt
Any store or product names? No?
18:11 February 13, 2013 by Masala
Very happy to be vegetarian right now ...
19:11 February 13, 2013 by Englishted
@pjnt

As a basic rule of thumb don't eat cheap mince meat or any processed food containing mince meat. This includes Kebabs at least in the U.K.

White meat is sound ,pork ,chicken but then unless it is mixed in a meal and then who knows.

I've eaten horse before and would do again however this is mislabeled and therefore dodgy on many levels.
19:44 February 13, 2013 by C Robert
German's are no immune for Horse Meat they have lots of taste for Horse, Donkey, Zebra. In fact whole Berlin Zoo were empty by the end of 1946.
19:49 February 13, 2013 by pjnt
lol, I don't mind eating horse, done so and would again. I worry that companies in Germany are for the most part protected from bad media. There are so many bad food scandles here and the companies seem to shrug off the event. We had one in schools not long ago. Ecoli in vegtables. Rotten pork for donner. It is endless.

We need a public registrar for people, companies and retailers that create, middleman and sell bad food.
00:34 February 14, 2013 by jg.
"We need a public registrar for people, companies and retailers that create, middleman and sell bad food."

Consumer protection is not the German way of doing things - telling consumers which businesses are bad would stop those businesses from exploiting more victims, which would clearly affect their profits.

Are the German authorities actually testing processed meat products or are they only reacting when other countries identify dodgy products?
00:42 February 14, 2013 by Berlin fuer alles
I reckon this practice is common all over Europe and the world for that matter. It was Ireland that first pin-pointed the fraud and opened a can of worms. Obviously there is largescale and widespread corruption in the meat industry with brown envelopes paving the way for cheap meat to enter the food chain. I just hope there is no let up in getting to the bottom of all this.
08:33 February 14, 2013 by Englishted
Could anyone answer me this :

If meat from a pig is called pork or bacon

and meat from a cow is called beef

what are the words for horse meat?

We could take a gallop poll.
09:41 February 14, 2013 by Berlin fuer alles
Maybe call et gallop-meat @Englishted
09:57 February 14, 2013 by rosenthalenglish
Everyone is really missing just how dangerous this situation REALLY is.If they can put horse meat in place of other meats with such ease,then terrorists can poison the whole food supply chain without any difficulty.
10:04 February 14, 2013 by The-ex-pat
17:54 February 13, 2013 by pjnt

Any store or product names? No?

UK press reported it was Aldi Lasagne with has been subsequently reported in the German press yesterday.................So it looks like my wife and I ate horse last Saturday night..............Dam tasty Horse it was.........
10:14 February 14, 2013 by Tonne
Woah there @Englishted, let's rein in these jokes lest someone bridles at their tastelessness!

The mane point of this tail is that of possible, neigh probable, fraud and the possibility that the meat has been tainted with bute.

As beef comes from bouef, pork comes from porc and mutton from mouton, I would guess that horsemeat would have become shovel.
11:07 February 14, 2013 by raandy
Aldi Lasagne, Aldi bad cheese left on shelves even after it made some people ill,ecoli bacteria in our salads.

Horse meat, and with these revelations, what other nasty gastronomic delights are we going to be exposed too in the near future?

Public food safety here needs an upgrade.
13:54 February 14, 2013 by wethepeople2012
If you want to know who committed the horse meat fraud-just wait a few months and watch which brands go up in price since they will no longer be able to pass horse meat off as beef. Go out now and price all the frozen lasagna and compare the prices in a few months.
04:23 February 15, 2013 by RainerL
Nothing wrong with Horse Meat. One of the best Meats out there. Yummmmy!!!!
20:06 February 15, 2013 by raandy
RainerL you gotta be kidding these horses were ready for the glue factory.Nobody slaughters a healthy horse. This kind of deception is what makes it more dubious.

Enjoy that old sad saddle meat.
18:55 February 16, 2013 by Maynard33
The goats eat horse meat. LOL.
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