Within hours of the International Union of Science and Technology’s World Congress ending in Dublin last week, news broke of yet another UK horse meat scandal.
Three men – two Brits and a Dane – are accused of conspiring to sell horse meat as beef. The beef-that’s-actually-horse scandal first exploded in Europe in early 2013, when horse DNA was found in frozen burgers in several British and Irish supermarkets, shortly after our own donkey meat scandal. Almost 70% of a sample of 139 processed meat products bought from butcheries across South Africa were found in DNA tests to contain undeclared species including, most shockingly, donkey, in one KwaZulu-Natal case.
“Clearly, our consumers cannot generally accept that the meat products they buy are correctly labelled,” said Dr Donna-Maree Cawthorn, co-author of the study, which was published in the international Food Control journal at the time. And two local restaurants known for serving game were found to be passing off pork as warthog.
Article by Wendy Knowler for the Times Media Group. Read the full article here.
*Wendy’s trip to Dublin was funded by the DST-NRF Centre of Excellence in Food Security, as a member of its steering committee.
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