Our staff in England and Ireland have been sounding the alarm for the past two weeks. And now it comes out. The British are just as involved in the horse meat scandal as the Europeans. Police raids in Britain have exposed that horses are being slaughtered for their meat which is processed and labelled as beef or lamb in burgers and kebabs.
Cross-posted from the Daily Mail
by SEAN POULTER and ANTHONY BOND
This graphic shows the location of where both raids took place. (click to enlarge)
The shocking find, which implicates the UK for the first time in the food fraud scandal, came during police raids in Yorkshire and West Wales.
Until last night, foreign abattoirs and food manufacturers had been blamed for what ministers called an ‘international criminal conspiracy’.
But food officials say horses were slaughtered here and their meat sold to takeaways all over the country. The burgers were labelled as beef and the kebabs as lamb. The alarming twist suggests retired racehorses and ponies could have been sold on as regular meat.
Environment Secretary Owen Paterson described the development as ‘utterly and totally disgraceful’ but pulled out of making an emergency statement to the House of Commons.
The Government has been accused of delay, confusion and buck-passing in its handling of the crisis. In the three weeks that followed the initial discovery of horse meat contamination, ministers insisted it was not a British problem while the Food Standards Agency limited the scope of its initial tests to around 230 food samples.
But following revelations of high levels of contamination of Findus products Mr Paterson called in supermarkets and food firms for talks and insisted on a much wider range of testing of all processed beef products.
Mary Creagh, Labour’s environment spokesman, said: ‘I’m glad the FSA has investigated the concerns about horse meat entering the food chain I first raised with ministers three weeks ago. It’s right that action is being taken to deal with the criminals whose activities are damaging confidence in the UK food industry.’
The astonishing revelation makes clear that horse meat has reached British high streets from three separate sources over the past year or more.
First, horse meat from Poland was sent to Ireland where it was turned into burgers for Tesco, Burger King, the Co-op, Asda and Aldi, among others.
Then, horse meat from Romania was sent to a French food company, Comigel, which turned it into lasagne and spaghetti bolognese for Findus, Tesco and Aldi.
Police raids in Britain have exposed horses being slaughtered and their meat labelled as beef or lamb
Now a Yorkshire slaughterhouse and a food manufacturer in Wales have taken horses and turned them in to 100 per cent horse meat burgers and kebabs.
Police raids were carried out yesterday on the Peter Boddy Licensed Slaughterhouse at Todmorden, West Yorkshire, which is licensed to kill horses.
It supplied horse carcasses to Farmbox Meats Ltd of Llandre in Aberystwyth, which then turned them into burgers labelled as beef or kebabs that would presumably be sold as lamb.
Last night, the FSA said: ‘The FSA has detained all meat found and seized paperwork, including customer lists from the two companies.’ The FSA’s director of operations, Andrew Rhodes, said: ‘I have suspended both plants immediately while our investigations continue.’ Read more >>
Tuesday's Horse 
How disgusting! I am thoroughly disgusted with man. What is lying? A disgusting sin that some feel that they have a right to do.
http://www.anythingforhorseandrider.com
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It seems that France used to be the horse meat eating capital of Europe but one of the articles I read this morning said that there is almost no horse meat butchers in the towns and cities anymore. There was one place that served it but they said that only a few diners that were older people were the ones that ate it and they had to ask for it. The younger people won’t touch it. That is the best news i have heard for years about this. It may be like whale meat in Japan the younger adults won’t eat that either, they eat fast food. I have always said with no market it will stop.
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I am glad that the demand is dwindling.
It seems Switzerland is the worst country over there now. They are now slaughtering and eating dogs in addition to their fervent taste for horse meat.
Talk about regression.
There is something genuinely amiss with these people. While the Asian countries are moving forward on their aversion to eating pets, the fur trade and other horrendous acts against animals (kudos to them) these people in Switzerland seem to be morally and ethically adapting to some feral societal blunder.
One that fails to address the decency of accepting the sentient nature of our fellow companions on this planet we call earth. However meager our advances may be in today’s world of greed at the expense of compassion at least there is a movement that recognizes the importance of it all. Switzerland appears to be embracing the legacy of a holocaust…….one animal in nature to serve humans.
What’s next on their agenda? Spare me.
My only explanation is that their love of horse meat has finally fried their brains…bute, wormers, clen and all the rest. Please take them
and their cast off attitudes of shear lack of compassion for the horse and other creatures away…soon.
We do not need people like this on earth.
Hell will freeze over before I visit that country ever again.
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Right, a gang of international criminals, the mafia. Uh, huh, sure. And Santa and the Easter Bunny will be bringing me gifts for the holidays.
Unbelievable the lengths these politicians in ALL countries will go to in order to avoid the truth: horse slaughter is a business ONLY run by the lowest of the low, the knuckle dragging cretins who would poison other humans while defiling the sacred horse-man bond through such a betrayal. All for the almighty dollar. It’s as simple as that: we have amoral, evil monsters among us who are like ready to destroy horses lives in exchange for the money they can make selling their toxic carcinogenic flesh to other unsuspecting human beings.
This scandal has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt this is a widespread problem, where these greedy knuckle draggers are actively concealing the real source of this “food”. Duping consumers into thinking they are consuming farm animals that were bred and carefully raised under the appropriate regulations to ensure a safe food product is now proven in at least 3 to 4 different EU countries — how many more are doing the same? I would bet it is going on all over the world and it is one more reason we must stop all horse slaughter because as we all know, horses are NOT bred as food animals and so their flesh can never be safe for human consumption. Until we stop it everywhere, this crime against horse and man will go on. Sickening, this entire scandalous fiasco that is unfolding as our welcome to the year 2031.
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I agree with all your descriptions of the horse slaughter industry, but please everyone remember this:
None of this would be going on if there was no one actually interested in eating horse meat.
It is the horse meat consumer who drives the industry.
Without horse meat eaters, there is no horse meat industry, and the knuckle draggers and their ilk are out of business. Out of the horse meat business anyway.
No one seems to want to take a hard look at the horse meat consumer, I suppose because people like to eat other types of deal animal flesh, and it strikes too close to home.
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Vivian, We have heard that the purchase of horse meat has been falling in EU. I believe that this deceit is telling that the market is decreasing. If it was really holding its former high priced, high end meat choice, then why are these crooks and liars selling it as less expensive meats? I think with all the drug reports, and humanity issues the sale as horse meat had fallen to the place that the use of it named as other animals was the only way to get rid of it…shows us great hope, that we can shut this down..
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The taste for horse meat has been declining in most of the European countries most commonly known for it for the past couple of decades, but it is still quite popular in parts of Italy, Germany, Brazil and Argentina, and Switzerland, as well as some of the latest countries the EU have been admitting.
The Int’l Fund for Horses’ “Horse Meat is Ugly” campaign has been successful in keeping the numbers falling where we have had a presence. We have been wondering who has been eating all the tons of horse meat that continues to be imported because the supply seemed to be outweighing the demand. Now we know what they have been doing with it.
China is still at the top of the list of largest producers and consumers. Their regulations are lax if they exist at all.
While the Romanians are being blamed, and perhaps rightly so to some degree, it seems more likely that the horse meat ending up in Britain and labelled other meats originates from within, from France, and perhaps even Belgium although that has yet to be confirmed. Australia also exports a large amount of horse meat but they seem to escape attention.
Bute tainted horse meat will definitely turn up as the testing begins.
What a cruel, horrific mess. The suffering of the horses is almost unimaginable.
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Is The meat in the US being inspected and tested also>>>>>>?????????
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Arlene, there is NO Horse Slaughter in the USA now, and the Advocates are fighting like banshees to keep it from returning. However, approx 163000 horses were shipped from the USA to Canada or Mexico Killing Plants.. And no, there is no adequate paper trail or testing in either place. The EU has done recent inspections, that were failures in both places.. It is very easy to research, but let me be very forward. We can use every voice, type time, and telephone to fight this threat. We are working for Federal Laws that would prevent any American Horse from being slaughtered or being shipped to slaughter.
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Not only am I appalled that horse slaughter continues in Britain, but I can’t believe that these “horse meat” suppliers are allowed to operate without proper drug testing, which is obviously missing if the meat is being passed on as another animal. and the horses are purported to be race horses and ponies..both I’m sure treated with the same preventative and health care drugs that are used in the US. I read the Irish report on Drugs in Horse Meat.. You would have thought that they did also.
Very bad care taking of your citizens.
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I think the resounding issue here is that it doesn’t matter whether people have an aversion to anything. Whether that be slaughter of horses, cows, pigs, etc or fur farming and the atrocities associated with that for example. The sad reality is that the human race is a disgrace and regardless of whether you live in a democratic society or one of dictatorial rule you have no say in what happens to any of these sentient beings because money is the bottom line and the very government you voted in (if you had the choice to do so) has no use for your sentiments or interests.
We, as a whole, are a corrupt society and without compassion for anything human and animal alike. Life is meaningless when it comes to economics.
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I guess we should not be surprised. Russia and the rest of the EU Countries have banned all U.S. beef, pork and turkey from entering their countries due to the drugs.
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But they do nothing about the horse meat that they KNOW is coming from the US. Just wait. Pandora’s Box is about to spring wide open.
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I agree, Suzanne. I see an investment in a HORSE SLAUGHTERING PLANT as about the most insane way to spend money in the entire USA. I hate that any horse has died in this horrifying way, but I hope that the truth about their meat, and how it is disguised to avoid the drug questions becomes the central issue that keeps American Horses safe, and then extends to other horses not raised for slaughter, and then finally PEOPLE decide not to eat this meat.
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