Horse drug may have entered food chain: govt

Guardian News and Media/LondonEight horses slaughtered for food in the UK have tested positive for the veterinary painkiller phenylbutazone, known as bute, new tests from the Food Standards Agency (FSA) revealed. The Minister for Food and Agriculture, David Heath, told the House of Commons that 206 carcasses had been tested.Six of the carcasses that tested positive may have entered the food chain in France in the last few weeks, according to the FSA, and efforts were being made to recall them. Heath said the Findus food products found to contain horse had tested negative for bute. The shadow environment secretary, Mary Creagh, told Heath she had raised the issue of bute three weeks ago and accused ministers of “catastrophic complacency”.In July 2012 the veterinary residues committee (VRC), which advises the government, warned that it had repeatedly expressed concern about bute entering the food chain.The VRC said bute had “the potential for serious adverse effects in consumers, such as blood dyscrasia (a rare but life-threatening condition)”. No bute is permitted in horsemeat for human consumption, but it was found in 2%-5% of samples tested between 2007 and 2011, during which time only 50 tests a year were conducted. The horse passport system meant to prevent bute contamination in the 8,000 or so horses slaughtered for meat in the UK each year was not working, said a member of the VRC.Dame Sally Davies, the UK’s chief medical officer, said: “The trace levels detected are very unlikely to have harmed any human, child or foetus.” She said a person would have to eat more than 500 horsemeat burgers to get a harmful dose. All food products so far tested for bute, including Findus lasagne and Tesco supermarket burgers, tested negative. The FSA tested all 206 horses slaughtered in the UK for food between January 30 and February 7 and found eight positive results for bute.Six, all slaughtered by LJ Potter Partners at Stillmans in Taunton, Somerset, south-west England, were sent to France and may have entered the human food chain.The other two, killed in the market town of Nantwich in north-west England, did not leave the slaughterhouse. The rate of bute contamination found was 6%, meaning that across a year, 540 contaminated carcasses would be expected, as 9,000 horses are killed for meat each year in the UK.The FSA said that from now on horse carcasses would not be released from abattoirs until they had received a negative test. The FSA did not test for any other possible contaminants.The tests were carried out in response to the discovery of horsemeat in processed food labelled as beef. The results came on the day that a committee of MPs severely criticised the government’s response to the horsemeat scandal, calling it “flat-footed”. Results of two carcasses that tested positive for bute in 2012 - out of a total of nine - were not reported to the FSA for up to seven months, a mistake that has prompted urgent investigations by the agency and the department for environment, food and rural affairs (Defra).The horsemeat is thought to have left abattoirs in Cheshire and Somerset in May and October but the positive results did not arrive at the FSA until 10 days ago. Only then did officials realise the consignments had gone months before to companies in the Netherlands and France.Safety alerts were then issued to authorities in the two countries. The FSA would not name the companies in Europe, but the meat that went to the Netherlands was tested at High Peak Meat Exports in Nantwich, Cheshire, in May - it was one of three positive tests there during the year. The other carcass was tested in Taunton in October, where a company called LJ Potter rents the Stillmans abattoir for a day a week. It had a total of six positive tests in a year.