A maze of trading between meat wholesalers has made it difficult to trace the origins of food – enabling horsemeat disguised as beef to be sold in frozen meals across Europe.
On Monday, Romanian officials defended two plants implicated, saying the meat was properly declared and any fraud was committed elsewhere. France says Romanian butchers and Dutch and Cypriot traders were part of a supply chain that resulted in horsemeat being labeled as beef before it was included in frozen dinners including lasagna, moussaka and the French equivalent of Shepherd’s Pie. British grocery chain Tesco said that tests showed some samples of its frozen spaghetti meal contained more than 60 percent horse DNA.
News Tribune news services
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