Horsemeat fraud under investigation in South France
Baku, December 16 (AZERTAC). France has pinned much of the blame for Europe's meat scandal on a French firm that allegedly sold 750 tonnes of horsemeat as beef that ended up in millions of ready-to-eat meals sold across the continent.
On Thursday police in Britain arrested three men suspected of passing horsemeat off as beef, as Germany joined the ranks of countries where frozen ''beef'' lasagne was found to contain horsemeat.
Spanghero denied any wrongdoing, saying it had never ordered, received or resold any meat that it did not believe to be beef.
The findings of an investigation by France's anti-fraud office, presented by the Consumer Affairs Minister, Benoit Hamon, were staggering.
It said Spanghero, a meat-processing firm in the southwestern town of Castelnaudary, had knowingly sold 750 tonnes of horsemeat mislabelled as beef over a period of six months, 500 tonnes of which were sent to French firm Comigel, which makes frozen meals at its Tavola factory in Luxembourg.
That meat was used to make 4.5 million products that were sold by Comigel to 28 companies in 13 European countries, it said.
Mr Hamon said Spanghero would be prosecuted and officials said its licence to handle meat would be suspended pending further investigations.
The minister said that Comigel, which supplied millions of ready-to-eat meals to supermarkets, which have now removed them from their shelves, had been deceived by Spanghero.
But he said Comigel had failed to carry out tests or inspect paperwork that would have alerted it to the scam. He said Romanian abattoirs named in the affair appeared to have acted in good faith.
Spanghero on Thursday again denied any wrongdoing, saying it had never ordered, received or resold any meat that it did not believe to be beef.
In a sign of the damage the scandal has done to consumer confidence, 11 major food retailers and suppliers issued a public letter in Britain on Friday saying they shared people's ''anger and outrage'' and were ''working around the clock'' to identify what had gone wrong.
Evidence of horsemeat had been confined to frozen products, but the Asda supermarket in Britain announced on Thursday it had pulled a fresh beef bolognese sauce from the shelves after tests revealed it contained horse DNA.
In Britain, police said three men suspected of passing horsemeat off as beef were arrested on Thursday on suspicion of fraud. Two were arrested in Aberystwyth in Wales where a food processing plant is based, and one in northern England, where police raided an abattoir.
Both the processing plant and the abattoir were shut down by Britain's Food Standards Agency on Wednesday.
They are the first plants in Britain accused of selling horsemeat labelled as beef.
The Dutch government's food and consumer watchdog has also carried out tests for horsemeat at about 100 businesses.
Concerns about horsemeat first emerged in mid-January when Irish authorities found traces of horse in beef burgers sold in supermarkets including Tesco and Aldi.
The scandal spiralled last week when Comigel alerted Findus to the presence of horsemeat in the meals it had made for the food giant and which were on sale in Britain.
Since then retailers in Britain, Sweden, France, Switzerland, Germany and the Netherlands have removed Comigel products.
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