FOXNews.com: Horse meat found in Ikea's Swedish meatballs

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Horse meat found in Ikea's Swedish meatballs Feb 25th 2013, 10:54 PRAGUE –  Furniture retailer Ikea says it has halted all sales of meat balls in Sweden after Czech authorities detected horse meat in frozen meatballs that were labeled as beef and pork. Ikea's Swedish branch said on its Facebook page Monday that it won't sell or serve any meatballs at its stores in Sweden out of concern for "potential worries among our customers." It said its own controls had not shown any traces of horse meat. It wasn't immediately clear whether Ikea would also stop selling meatballs in other countries.  Calls seeking comment from Ikea in Sweden were not immediately returned Monday. The Czech authority also found horse meat in beef burgers imported from Poland during random tests of food products. Authorities across Europe have started doing random DNA checks after traces of horse meat turned up in frozen supermarket meals such as burgers and lasagna beginning last month. The European Union's agriculture ministers gathered in Brussels Monday to discuss the widening scandal's fallout, with some member states pressing for tougher rules to regain consumer confidence. The 27-nation bloc must agree on binding origin disclosures for food product ingredients, starting with a better labeling of meat products, German agriculture minister Ilse Aigner said. "Consumers have every right to the greatest-possible transparency," she insisted. Austria backs the German initiative; but others like Ireland say existing rules are sufficient although Europe-wide controls must be strengthened to address the problem of fraudulent labeling. The scandal has created a split between nations like Britain who see further rules as a protectionist hindrance of free trade under the bloc's single market, and those calling for tougher regulation. Processed food products -- a business segment with traditionally low margins that often leads producers to hunt for the cheapest suppliers -- often contain ingredients from multiple suppliers in different countries, who themselves at time subcontract production to others, making it hard to monitor every link in the production chain. Standardized DNA checks with meat suppliers and more stringent labeling rules will add costs that producers will most likely hand down to consumers, making food more expensive. The scandal began in Ireland in mid-January when the country's announced the results of its first-ever DNA tests on beef products. It tested frozen beef burgers taken from store shelves and found that more than a third of brands at five supermarkets contained at least a trace of horse. The sample of one brand sold by British supermarket kingpin Tesco was more than a quarter horse. Such discoveries have spread like wildfire across Europe as governments, supermarkets, meat traders and processors began their own DNA testing of products labeled beef and have been forced to withdraw tens of millions of products from store shelves. More than a dozen nations have detected horse flesh in processed products such as factory-made burger patties, lasagnas, meat pies and meat-filled pastas. The investigations have been complicated by elaborate supply chains involving multiple cross-border middlemen.

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