Agriculture ministers from European Union (EU) countries implicated in the recent horsemeat scandal have held emergency talks in EU headquarters to discuss the crisis.
On Wednesday, agriculture ministers from the United Kingdom, France, Ireland, Luxembourg, Poland, Romania, Sweden and European Health Commissioner Tonio Borg attended the talks in Brussels, AFP reported.
The ministers called on all 27 EU states to carry out intensive DNA tests on beef samples for traces of horsemeat and a harmful equine medicine known as Bute in an effort to restore consumer confidence.
The test will be conducted in March and Initial results will be announced on April 15.
“We have to get to the bottom of these cases,” British Environment Minister Owen Paterson told reporters after the meeting.
“This is a criminal conspiracy to defraud the public, he added.
The meeting, which was called by Ireland, came after the discovery that meat labeled as beef and sold in up to 16 European countries, contained horsemeat.
On February 9, French Consumer Affairs Minister Benoit Hamon said the horsemeat had originated in Romania, although there were links with French, Dutch and Cypriot firms and a factory in Luxembourg.
Romania has denied the charges and Agriculture Minister Daniel Constantin again insisted on Wednesday that “all the horse meat provided by the Romanian companies that was placed on the EU market was correctly labeled.”
The scandal has raised questions about the complexity of the food industry’s supply chains across the EU bloc, with a number of supermarket chains withdrawing frozen beef meals from their shelves.
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