Brussels, 05/04/2013 (Agence Europe) - According to an article that appeared in the Dutch press, an investigation carried out by the Dutch authorities has revealed the presence of dog and cat meat in food intended for human consumption in the Netherlands. The European Commission considers at this stage that this is purely speculative information. Nonetheless, it does intend to look into the matter further, the Commission said on Friday 5 April.
Answering a journalist who asked whether the Commission was aware of this latest discovery, Frédéric Vincent, who is the spokesman for Tonio Borg, Commissioner for Health and Consumer Policy, answered that he had read about it in the press but that no-one had passed on the information via RASFF (Ed.: Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed). The European Commission intends to write to the Spanish veterinary authorities in coming days in order to learn more about the matter as, in the Netherlands, some say the meat came from Spain. However, Vincent pointed out, for now all this is no more than speculation.
Results of horse tests due 15 April. Regarding the coordinated testing carried out in March throughout the EU in response to the scandal of horsemeat being sold as beef for frozen processed food, the spokesman stressed that, given results currently analysed, the cases of fraud are “limited” and that there is no indication of the presence of phenylbutazone, the anti-inflammatory that is banned from human consumption. He was able to confirm that the full results will be available within the next ten days.
In total, 2,500 DNA tests have been carried out to identify the species of animal used for meat in processed products, and 4,000 tests have also been carried out to test for phenylbutazone residue (2,500 in establishments handling horsemeat in the EU, and 1,500 on imported products). (AN/transl.jl)