LONDON, Feb 22, (Agencies): Two major food companies pulled more products from shelves in Britain, Belgium, Ireland and the Netherlands on Friday after discovering horsemeat in ready-made meals labelled as beef.

The move came as British food safety authorities revealed that a total of 37 products sold by retailers had now tested positive for equine meat since the start of the scandal that has hit many European countries.
Frozen foods group Iglo, the parent company of Birds Eye, said it was withdrawing all beef products made by the Belgian supplier Frigilunch N. V. after beef chili con carne sold in Belgium tested positive for 2 percent horse DNA.

The “precautionary measure” affects eight Iglo products in Belgium, three Birds Eye products in Britain, three Birds Eye products in Ireland and one Iglo product in the Netherlands. “The withdrawn products will not be replaced on supermarket shelves until we have finished our investigations and have complete confidence in this supplier,” it said in a statement. Separately food manufacturer Sodexo, whose clients include the British armed forces, said it was withdrawing all frozen beef products from its British catering operations.

French-based Sodexo said it had taken the step after a frozen beef product tested positive for horse DNA.
Linked products included beef burgers, minced beef and halal minced beef, Britain’s Food Standards Agency (FSA) said. The FSA on Friday released its latest results from a second wave of tests on meat products in Britain, which formally confirmed eight new products that were positive for horsemeat, although all including Sodexo’s had previously been made public.

Out of a total of 3,634 products tested in Britain over 99 percent contained no horse DNA at or above the level of 1 percent, the agency said, adding that its testing programme would continue.

A vast food scandal has erupted in Europe in January after horsemeat was initially found in so-called beef ready-made meals and burgers in Britain and Ireland. It has since spread to as far as Hong Kong.
Meanwhile, French firm Spanghero, at the heart of the horsemeat scandal rocking Europe, will remain barred from the wholesale trade of frozen meat, the agriculture ministry said Friday after releasing the results of a probe.

The company sparked a continental food alert by allegedly passing off 750 tonnes of horsemeat as beef, and had its sanitary licence suspended last week.

On Monday, Spanghero was allowed to resume production of minced meat, sausages and ready-to-eat meals following protests from 300-odd workers who said they were being unfairly penalised and were not in the loop about any fraud.

But the company, whose horsemeat found its way into 4.5 million “beef” products sold across Europe, will no longer be allowed to stock frozen meat, the agriculture ministry said in a statement.

“The conclusions of this investigation lead us to maintain the suspension of the sanitary licence,” it said, referring to whether Spanghero can store meat.

The ministry said wholesale trade of unprocessed meat accounted for “only two to three percent” of the company’s revenues.

Agriculture Minister Stephane Le Foll said he “wanted the plant to manufacture ready-to-eat meals but no longer engage in meat trading.”

Upholding the ban means Spanghero cannot act as middleman between abattoirs and food-processing companies, the situation which allegedly allowed it to change labels on horsemeat and sell it on as beef.

A vast food scandal has erupted in Europe after horsemeat was initially found in so-called beef ready-made meals and burgers in Britain and Ireland.

It has spread to as far as Hong Kong where an imported brand of lasagne was pulled from shelves.
Paris said on Friday it had sought details from a Dutch firm through which the horsemeat transited.
Meanwhile, Ireland’s government says an Irish meat processor has been discovered sending horse meat mislabeled as beef to a company in the Czech Republic.

Agriculture Minister Simon Coveney says investigations by fraud detectives have found that B&F Meats in the town of Carrick-on-Suir was shipping meat to the Czech company using labels in Czech describing the product as beef. He says police and agriculture officials shut down B&F’s operations Friday.

Ireland previously had found no evidence to show that any horses slaughtered in Ireland ended up in the human food chain. Earlier investigations traced the discovery of horse meat in Irish-produced beef burgers to imports from Poland.

Coveney says he is “seriously concerned about this development.”