food safety
28 | The Grocer | 13 January 2018 Get the full story at thegrocer.co.uk
hamburger buns were splashed across front pages.
Journalists called for hourly updates. Politicians
pushed for answers. And trust in the food and drink
sold by some of the biggest names in grocery was put
in jeopardy.
It has been five years since Horsegate came scream-
ing into the public consciousness, spawning hundreds
of news articles, the withdrawal of millions of products,
five government reports, a three-year police investiga-
tion and the conviction of three men for fraud.
All the more shocking, then, that its detection came
about practically by accident, with only two chance
discoveries coinciding in November 2012 lying behind
the biggest scandal to hit grocery in decades.
Two chance events
The first was in Northern Ireland, where an environ-
mental health officer had received a tip-off that sup-
plier Freeza Meats, which sold beefburgers to the likes
of Asda, had been adding undeclared beef hearts to its
burgers (an offence for which they pled guilty two years
later, incurring a fine of £42k).
Arriving to inspect the factory on a Newry industrial
estate, the EHO spotted 12 tonnes of meat at the back
of the warehouse, badly wrapped in dodgy shrink
wrap and mottled with freezer burn. Suspicious, she
took samples for testing, a move that would later flag
up the first discovery of horsemeat in the UK (though
Freeza Meats has always denied any knowledge of the
contents of the load).
That same month across the Irish border Reilly and
his team at FSAI were finalising the details of their
annual authenticity study. They did it every year, with
previous investigations into honey and fish, but 2012
was the turn of meat, and they settled on looking at
processed products that could be difficult to identify.
“At this stage we had no idea what was going on,”
insists Reilly. He admits there was “a little bit of food
safety intelligence” prompting their focus though, with
scattered reports on the EU Rapid Alert System of fake
horse passports across Europe. “It wasn’t a harmonised
process like it was with beef where there’s a rigid sys-
tem for tagging and traceability. It dawned on us there
were opportunities for potential fraud.
“Ireland was also just coming out of a recession.
There were lots of ponies and horses that people could
no longer afford and owners were looking to make
some money to recoup from these animals. The food
chain could be a dumping ground for an animal wel-
fare problem.”
By the time details for the study were finalised,
though, it was late in the year and time was short.
Rather than food inspectors, the team tasked a per-
sonal assistant with two young children who was head-
ing out to the local shops to bring back samples. Early
tests on frozen burgers detected horse. “I said, are you
sure?” remembers Reilly, before sending out the PA
once again to collect more products off the shelves,
this time on the hunt for specific production codes. The
results were the same.
Painfully aware that “if the horse manure hits the
fan the first thing people are going to come after is our
methods”, Reilly sent off for one last round of testing
in early December, this time from an accredited lab.
Before that “there was no obligation to say what we
were doing. For it to leak out we were doing testing on
horsemeat would’ve caused a story in itself and we
couldn’t go out without sound scientific data.”
Arriving at 5.40pm on Friday 11 January the data from
the Eurofins lab in Ebersberg, Germany confirmed not
only the presence of horse, but levels reaching up to
29% in some cases, with implicated products stocked
by major supermarkets.
Events moved quickly. Within 24 hours the FSA, led
then by CEO Catherine Brown, had gathered industry
representatives together at an urgent meeting to agree
next steps. By that same afternoon, Tesco, Aldi, and
Asda had withdrawn 10 million burgers from their
shelves. Worst hit was publicly owned Tesco, which
watched its share price plummet by £300m.
Within a fortnight Tesco and the Co-op had dumped
ABP-owned Silvercrest Foods amid allegations it had
been supplying adulterated burgers, with nine out of
13 patties tested at the Irish processor’s plant allegedly
containing horse. The business shut its factory doors
a month later.
In the first week of February, the FSA confirmed that
the 12 tonnes of meat seized from Freeza Meats’ cold
store in Northern Ireland contained 80% horse, with
the subsequent discovery of metal ID chips linking the
meat to pet ponies in Poland and Irish prized hunter
Carnesella Lady only adding fuel to the tabloid fire.
News of a second compromised supply chain broke
later that month as FSA tests revealed Findus beefTIMELINE: THE
MILESTONES
THAT SHAPED
‘HORSEGATE’
November 2012
An environmental health officer
inspects premises at Northern Irish
supplier Freeza Meats. She finds 12
tonnes of frozen beef. Tests detect
80% horsemeat. The Food Safety
Authority Ireland conducts testing
on supermarket beefburgers, which
detect up to 29% horsemeat.15 January 2013
FSA Ireland publishes its test
results online. The day before, ithad informed Irish ministers and
its counterparts at the UK Food
Standards Agency.16 January 2013
The FSA meets with
representatives from the food &
drink industry, agreeing a four-
point action plan. This includes an
urgent review of where adulterated
products were sourced from,
whether legal action is required,
and a UK-wide authenticity study