The Asda chain, which is owned by Wal-Mart, said late Monday that its Smart Price Corned Beef had been withdrawn from shelves in March after it was found to contain traces of horse meat, and that further tests showed that the banned drug, also known as bute, had been detected in very small doses.

“Asda is recalling this product and anyone who has Asda Smart Price Corned Beef should not eat it,” said a statement on the company Web site, which added that the risk to health was extremely low. Consumers were asked to return the product to stores.

The announcement is a new development in the scandal over horse meat in beef products. Until Monday, there had been no suggestion that any item sold in Britain posed a health risk. Eight horses slaughtered in Britain for human consumption tested positive for bute and although some of that meat was exported to France, none of it was used in British food, according to the authorities.

Tests to detect bute take longer than those for horse DNA, which is why the Asda product was withdrawn from shelves last month well before the discovery of traces of bute that prompted the recall.

A second Asda corned beef product that also contained horse meat traces and had been taken off supermarket shelves was also being recalled as a precaution, although no bute had been discovered, the company said.

Britain’s Food Standards Agency said Asda’s corned beef contained “very low levels of bute (four parts per billion — 4ppb) and is the only meat product where bute has been found. However, bute has previously been found in horse carcasses. The level of bute found in this product is considerably lower than the highest levels found in carcasses (the highest level found was 1900ppb).”

It cited previous comments from the chief medical officer for England, Professor Dame Sally Davies, in which she said that horse meat containing phenylbutazone presents a very low risk to human health.

“Phenylbutazone, known as bute, is a commonly used medicine in horses. It is also prescribed to some patients who are suffering from a severe form of arthritis. The levels of bute that have previously been found in horse carcasses mean that a person would have to eat 500-600 one hundred percent horse meat burgers a day to get close to consuming a human’s daily dose. And it passes through the system fairly quickly, so it is unlikely to build up in our bodies,” she said.

“In patients who have been taking phenylbutazone as a medicine, there can be serious side effects but these are rare. It is extremely unlikely that anyone who has eaten horse meat containing bute will experience one of these side effects.”

But Mary Creagh, the environment spokeswoman for the opposition Labour Party, said it was “deeply worrying that bute, a drug banned from the human food chain, has been discovered in one brand of corned beef. This product was withdrawn from sale on 8th March yet has only been formally recalled now, after testing positive for bute, meaning people could have unwittingly been eating meat containing this drug for the last month.

“This exposes the weaknesses in the government’s handling of the horse meat scandal where products were withdrawn but in some cases not tested either for horse meat or bute. The interests of the consumer should have been put first.”

The British food industry has tested around 5,400 beef products and about 1 percent showed traces of horse meat.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/11/world/europe/traces-of-horse-drug-found-in-british-beef-product.html?partner=rss&emc=rss