Tesco ‘paid more attention to misshaped fruit’ than horse meat burgers
Tesco applied such stringent quality controls to “misshapen fruit” that it was “extraordinary” it didn’t know its value burgers contained 29% horse meat, a leading MP has claimed.
Speaking at a meeting of the cross-party Environment, Food and Rural affairs committeeLabour’s Barry Gardiner told Tesco technical director, Tim Smith “As a Company you are notorious for sending misshapen apples or pears back to farmers, yet you didn’t pick up on the fact that your burgers had 29% horse meat. Surely this is a thing of extraordinary proportions?”
Smith stated Tesco spend between £3.5M and £4M a year on 22,000 surveillance tests and 1,200 audits and that the real issue was that ABP Foods had used an unapproved supplier in Poland, which had supplied the horsemeat.