Ikea’s decision — which followed a recall by the Swiss food maker Nestlé last week — demonstrated that even closely guarded brand names have found themselves vulnerable.
In weeks of tracing the problem, European Union and national officials have conceded that their oversight had not been aimed at authenticating food products. Now that governments and companies have undertaken more extensive testing, the results appear to indicate that food adulteration may be more commonplace and widespread than previously believed.
“Clearly there has been fraud on a massive scale across multiple countries in the E.U.,” Simon Coveney, the agriculture minister for Ireland, which holds the union’s rotating presidency, told a news conference after a meeting with colleagues in Brussels on Monday.
Noting that “big brands and big names that people trust” have been caught up in the issue, Mr. Coveney said, “We are all eager to get to the bottom of this.”
The detection of horse meat, which began in Ireland and spread quickly, has raised questions about the quality and oversight of Europe’s complex chain of slaughterhouses, processed meat producers, distributors and retailers.
Already millions of products have been withdrawn, and new cases of adulteration are being discovered almost daily, involving some of the best-known food makers — including Findus and Iglo — and most prominent supermarket chains.
Ikea’s announcement underlined how few retailers can rest easy as more scrutiny is applied. The recall risks denting the homely Scandinavian image of Ikea, one of Sweden’s best-known companies.
A traditional part of Swedish cuisine, meatballs are consumed in huge quantities — 150 million a year, according to the company’s Web site — by customers in Ikea cafeterias and are also sold for consumption at home.
The company said its action concerned meatballs manufactured by one supplier in Sweden and applies to all European countries except Norway and Russia and to a limited number of products in Switzerland and Poland. The United States is not affected, the company said.
Clive Black, a retail analyst at Shore Capital, an investment banking company in London, said that Ikea’s announcement was “another left-field random outcome of the whole situation. Did Ikea want to sell horse meat? No. Have they been caught out by rogue elements? Yes.”
“The breadth with which contamination has been found clearly shows that there has been substantial rogue activity,” he added.
Ikea first said that it would not sell or serve any meatballs at its stores in Sweden after the Czech authorities detected horse meat in frozen meatballs that were labeled beef and pork, even though Ikea’s own tests two weeks ago had not detected horse DNA.
The company also said it was stopping sales in Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, France, Britain, Portugal, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Greece, Cyprus and Ireland. The meatballs were produced by Ikea’s main supplier of the product, a Swedish company called Familjen Dafgard.
In a statement later in the day, Anders Lennartsson, a spokesman for Ikea Food Services, said, “We take seriously the test result from the Czech Republic authorities, indicating presence of horse meat in one batch of our meatballs.”
Results of DNA tests conducted by the food industry in Britain, released last week, showed that 1 percent of beef products were tainted with horse meat. But that news was offset by the discovery of tainted beef products destined for school meals in Scotland.
And, while the issue is primarily seen as one of fraud and mislabeling, there is concern that a powerful equine painkiller, phenylbutazone, or bute, may have entered the food chain.
Stephen Castle reported from London, and Andrew Higgins from Brussels.
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/26/world/europe/ikea-recalls-its-meatballs-horse-meat-is-detected.html?partner=rss&emc=rss