Thousands of schools were today told to check on their food suppliers to ensure that horse meat is not being served to pupils.
The Food Standards Agency urged headteachers, hospitals, prison bosses and armed forces chiefs to make sure that they have “rigorous procurement procedures” in place. It also stressed that they should only deal with “reputable suppliers”.
Amid fears that the horse meat scandal is going to get worse:
- David Cameron met Environment Secretary Owen Paterson and Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt at No 10 this morning.
- Urgent tests were being carried out on hundreds of products.
- The Government’s chief medical officer Dame Sally Davies insisted that there was currently nothing to “suggest a safety risk to consumers”.
But Labour tore into the Government response to the crisis. Shadow environment secretary Mary Creagh said: “It’s unacceptable that it’s taken the Government four weeks to issue any guidance to schools and hospitals. Blundering ministers need to speed up official food tests.”
The food industry is due to announce the results of hundreds of tests by Friday, which should reveal the scale of the scandal in Britain. But the results of official tests will not be known until March 11, possibly a month later if further investigations are needed.
The FSA defended the timing, stating that they needed to be thorough given that prosecutions could be based on them. Mr Paterson was this afternoon updating MPs on the crisis, stating that it could involve 16 countries. He has said the Government is unable to impose a ban on meat imports unless contaminated beef is found to be a health risk.
Tests are being carried out to ascertain if the drug phenylbutazone — known as bute and which is banned from the human food chain — is in any of the horse meat. Dame Sally, the chief medical officer said: “It’s understandable that people will be concerned, but it is important to emphasise that, even if bute is found to be present at low levels, there is a very low risk indeed that it would cause any harm to health.”
At least one abattoir in Romania is believed to be the source of contaminated “beef” products . One theory for the apparent increase in the presence of horse meat is new restrictions on using horses on roads in Romania, which have led to a surge in animals being put down.
