Horsemeat: Estonia firm blames Irish supply
Nõo Company CEO Toomas Kruustyuk said: “We are in active correspondence with suppliers of meat from Ireland and Italy in order to find out why the raw material that was sold to us as quality meat has been identified as horsemeat.
“We are really sorry for what happened. Our plant has now cancelled all co-operation agreements with the supplier of the low-quality raw materials.”
Kruustyuk also pointed out that the products found to contain horsemeat had been withdrawn from sale, but it was likely that most of them had already been consumed, as the affected batch was produced last year.
No health risk
The Estonian Veterinary and Food Department said it was continuing to monitor the situation, but so far no phenylbutazone or other dangerous feed additives had been identified in horsemeat production, so there didn’t appear to be a health risk. However, the investigation is still ongoing.
Commenting on the source of the horsemeat, representatives of the Department noted that the mislabelled raw materials could have been imported into the country.
“At the moment we cannot exclude the likelihood that the products with the horsemeat were delivered from Western Europe. We tested several batches of products from Poland – and no horsemeat was found. Now we are going to test products from Ireland, which supplied raw material for several large enterprises for meat production in Estonia,” said a spokesperson for the Department.
Meanwhile, the Food and Veterinary Service of Latvia has found more products containing horsemeat meat on the grocery shelves. Local producer ‘Forevers’, whose products tested positive for horsemeat a month ago, has once again found itself in the middle of the scandal over the latest testing results, with its ‘Galyas maize’ sausages found to contain 14% horsemeat and its ‘Teyas’ sausages found to contain 3.2% horsemeat.
