LONDON, Feb 15, (Agencies): Tests have found horsemeat in school meals, hospital food and restaurant dishes in Britain, officials said Friday, as the scandal over adulterated meat spread beyond frozen supermarket products.

Whitbread PLC, Britain’s largest hotel and restaurant company, said horse DNA had been found in lasagna and burgers on its menus. The company, whose outlets include Premier Inn hotels and the Brewers Fayre and Beefeater Grill restaurant chains, said it was “shocked and disappointed at this failure of the processed meat supply chain.”

Officials also said horsemeat was present in cottage pies delivered to 47 schools in Lancashire county, northern England, and in hospital meals in Northern Ireland. David Bingham, of the health service’s Business Services Organization, said the hospital meals, from a supplier in the Republic of Ireland, had been withdrawn.

Several British supermarket chains, including Morrisons and Tesco, said Friday that tests on their products had so far been negative for horsemeat.

Duncan Campbell, a senior British food inspector, said the results would give a snapshot of the extent of the horsemeat contamination, which already has seen products pulled from supermarket shelves across Europe. But, he told the BBC, “I think there will be still more discoveries to be made.”

“The more people have looked for horsemeat, the more products have been found containing it. I don’t think we have got to the bottom of it yet,” he said.

Officials from the European Union countries decided Friday to go ahead with a plan for more intensive checks to detect horsemeat in food labeled as beef.

In addition, horsemeat will be tested for phenylbutazone, or bute, an anti-inflammatory veterinary drug that’s illegal to use in animals used for food.

EU Health Commissioner Tonio Borg welcomed the approval, saying, “consumers expect the EU, national authorities and all those involved in the food chain to give them all the reinsurance needed as regards what they have in their plates.”

Tested
Meanwhile, twenty-nine beef products out of 2,501 tested in Britain have been found to contain more than one percent horsemeat, the Food Standards Agency said on Friday.

FSA chief executive Catherine Brown said: “The overwhelming majority of beef products in this country do not contain horse. The examples we have had are totally unacceptable, but they are the exceptions.”
All of the 29 products containing horsemeat have already been withdrawn from sale, she added.
These include lasagne and spaghetti bolognese sold by Aldi supermarkets, burgers sold by Co-op stores, and burgers and spaghetti bolognese sold by Britain’s leading supermarket chain Tesco.
Beef lasagne made by the frozen foods giant Findus, as well as burgers for the catering industry produced by Irish firm Rangeland, were also on the list.

Brown stressed that the results were “still far from the full picture” and that testing continued on other products.

Pub and hotel group Whitbread on Friday became the latest company in Britain to admit horse DNA had been found in its food, saying two of its products — meat lasagnes and beefburgers — had been affected.