BBC News, Matt McGrath, Environment correspondent, 8 February 2013
One scientist called racehorses from the US "walking pharmacies" |
An
independent veterinary committee had "repeatedly expressed concern"
about a drug found in UK horsemeat destined for export, the BBC has learned.
The
discovery of horsemeat in UK foodstuffs is raising big concerns that UK testing
regimes are not sufficient.
There are
worries that if unregulated horsemeat is substituted for beef it could expose
people to a drug called phenylbutazone - often called "bute".
Once used
as an anti-inflammatory, its toxicity to some people led to a ban.
The drug in
rare cases caused a serious blood disorder known as aplastic anaemia.
But it is
still used widely to treat horses. Once treated these animals are not supposed
to enter the food chain.
'Big trade'
In the UK
about 8,000 horses a year are slaughtered for human consumption. This meat is
then exported to other European countries. Under EU regulations, it must be
tested for a range of substances including bute.
Last July
the UK's Veterinary Residues Committee, which carries out that testing, issued a report. In it, they showed that among 60 samples of horsemeat destined for
export in 2010, there were five positive results for bute.
The
independent committee said that it had "repeatedly expressed concern over
residues of phenylbutazone entering the food chain".
"The
number has gone up a little over the past three or four years," committee
chairman Dr Dorothy Craig told BBC News.
"We're
finding a rate of about 5%. It's banned, so the number of non-compliant samples
should be zero."
Since 2005,
horses are required by law to have a "passport" that contains a
declaration as to whether the horse is intended for human consumption.
These
passports are also used to record if an animal has been treated with bute; most
of the UK positives have come from difficulties with these documents.
"That's
really where the problems come from - either a genuine error or where there's
deliberate fraud going on," said Dr Craig.
In June
2012, the European Commission's Directorate General for Health and Consumers
issued its summary of an audit of abbatoirs in Italy - the EU's biggest
consumer of horsemeat. In it, they noted "numerous shortcomings were
detected in the passports".
But the
global nature of the horsemeat business is also causing problems in tracing
exposure to bute.
Using bute
on horses for human consumption is banned in the EU, but thousands of tonnes of
horsemeat is imported from the US, Canada and Mexico where practices are
different.
Many of the
animals killed for food in these countries were once racehorses, and the use of
bute at racetracks across the US is so widespread that one scientist speaking to the New York Times called these horses "walking pharmacies".
Research
published in the journal Food and Chemical Toxicology in 2010 highlighted this
risk, and EU officials warned last year about serious problems in verifying
whether horses killed in Mexico were drug-free.
"This
is a very big trade," says Mark Jones from Humane Society International.
"The
potential is there for quite significant contamination and residues, given that
the route by which this meat is moving is very far from watertight."
A man poses
holding a Findus beef lasagne frozen readymeal
near Sunderland, UK on February
8, 2013 (AFP/File, Andrew Yates)
|
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