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food safety
I
t was 5.40pm on a bitterly cold Friday
evening when the bad news landed
portentously on Professor Alan Reilly’s
Dublin desk.
Test results had just confirmed what
the then chief executive of FSA Ireland had feared for
two months, namely that frozen supermarket beefbur-
gers being bought and eaten by an unwitting public
contained undeclared horsemeat.
The news had arrived only days after Irish food min-
ister Simon Coveney had sung the praises of the coun-
try’s food and drink, as exports sailed above €9bn. The
bombshell test results left Reilly wringing his hands.
“I was just thinking good heavens, this is going to let
all the wind out of the sails. I spent the weekend with
a hot towel over my head.”
But after 48 hours poring over every last bit of data
“to ensure we weren’t going to cause an unnecessary
national scare” Monday came and Reilly had no choice
but to make a very difficult call to ministers. “Needless
to say there was disbelief all around. They were in com-
plete denial this could be happening.” But it was. And
at frightening speed.
By Tuesday 15 January 2013, the explosive tests had
gone public, with Reilly and his team fielding a flurry
of media enquiries (“we had 11 calls before 11am”)
from national newspapers and broadcasters, a press
onslaught they were completely unprepared for.
That momentum gathered furious pace as images
of pet ponies served up to shoppers between two
It was the biggest crisis to
hit grocery in decades.
Five years on, we ask six
leading figures to relive
their memories of
watching Horsegate
unfold from the front line
Megan Tatum