Retailers publish meat testing results

Retailers have carried out over a thousand tests on processed beef products in the last three weeks in the midst of the horse meat scandal, according to the British Retail Consortium.

Five brands tested positive for horse meat against the Food Standards Agency's threshold. These are the five own brand products that have already been notified to the FSA and withdrawn from sale over the same period.

The Agency and the police are looking into the circumstances through which meat products, purporting to be beef for kebabs and burgers, were sold when they were in fact horse.

The British Retail Consortium’s (BRC) food retailing members agreed with the Food Standards Agency and Environment Secretary Owen Paterson last weekend that they would provide the results available so far.

The BRC has collated the test results which show:


The total number of tests carried out by BRC members: 1052

65 per cent of the processed beef product lines retailers have set out to test have now been tested.

Five products have tested positive against the FSA’s one per cent threshold.

"Our members take their responsibilities to customers very seriously. We are extremely disappointed by recent events and understand consumers’ concern" said BRC director general Helen Dickinson.

"We have taken decisive, extensive action to deal with incidents since mid-January and worked round the clock to gather meaningful data quickly. These are confirmed results of completed tests. They show that retailers operate to high standards and customers are right to have confidence in them and what they sell."

"We have targeted the products most associated with the original incident, and conducted more than a thousand tests over three weeks."

"They show five products tested above the FSA’s threshold. These are not new cases. All products testing positive for horsemeat above the FSA’s threshold have already been notified to the FSA and the products withdrawn as soon as the information came to light."


"The retail sector is leading the food industry in working to understand what has happened, to ensure our systems are effective and to reassure consumers. Two thirds of the processed beef products retailers set out to test have already been tested but testing will continue and more results published."

"We already operate rigorous auditing to ensure confidence in what we buy from suppliers but this may not always pick up deliberate fraud. These events have shown the need for better information sharing across Europe. We will work with the FSA, Government and supply chains to improve intelligence and systems."

"The only people who really matter are consumers and they need to know that we are thinking about long term, effective solutions to the issues that have come to light. That’s exactly what we are doing."