Supermarket withdraws corned beef products over bute scare

The Food Standards Agency (FSA) said “very low levels” of the painkilling medicine known as bute were detected in the Asda Smart Price Corned Beef.

Customers who have bought the 340g tins, with any date code, have been urged not to eat the corned beef but to return it to the supermarket.

Leeds-based Asda withdrew the product on March 8 after it was found to contain more than one per cent horse DNA.

Bute was detected in some samples, at the level of four parts per billion (4ppb), when further tests were carried out.

The corned beef is the only meat product in which bute has been found since testing began in January, according to the FSA.

Bute had been discovered in horse carcasses in February however, with the highest level found being 1900ppb.

The FSA said no other Asda products are thought to be affected and that customers who bought the corned beef should contact the supermarket for a refund.

They said that while animals treated with bute should not enter the food chain, the risk of damage to the health of anyone who had eaten such meat is “very low”.

Chief Medical Officer Prof Dame Sally Davies previously said the levels of bute previously found in horse carcasses meant a person would have to eat up to 600 burgers, containing 100 per cent horse meat, every day to come close to consuming a human’s daily dose of the drug.

Horse carcasses in the UK need to have a negative bute test before they can enter the food chain.

But FSA chiefs have admitted a significant amount of horsemeat contaminated with bute could have entered the food chain since last year.

The Yorkshire Post exclusively revealed in February how horsemeat found to contain bute had been sent to a farm in the region for human consumption last year.

In a statement last night, Asda said it withdrew Smart Price Corned Beef last month after a positive test for horse DNA and now tests had revealed “very low levels” of bute.

It added: “The FSA has reassured us that the quantities we’ve found pose a low risk to human health.”

It said a second 340g tinned product Chosen By You Corned Beef, also withdrawn in March after traces of horse DNA were discovered, had not tested positive for bute.

“However as a precaution it is also being recalled as it is made in the same factory,” it said.

Asda said it had taken “an extremely cautious approach since the very beginning” and had carried out more than 700 tests so far, “moving swiftly to remove any products” when they had any concerns.

Asda has now withdrawn eight products which contained traces of horse DNA, three products wrongly containing pork DNA, a steak product with lamb DNA, and more than 40 other products it was selling “as a precaution”.

Ministers say they have launched the biggest investigation ever into criminal activity across Europe over contamination of foodstuffs with horsemeat since the scandal was exposed in January.

Two more beef products yesterday became the latest found to contain horse DNA as part of the UK-wide sampling undertaken by the FSA.

Officials confirmed results for four of the remaining five samples tested under the programme, adding that all five products had already been removed from sale.

Neither of the two samples containing horse DNA at or above the one per cent threshold for reporting – a burger bought from Nefyn Pizza and Kebab House in Gwynedd in Wales and manufactured by the Burger Manufacturing Company and a beefburger bought from Pig Out in Walsall and manufactured by King Fry Meat Products – contained bute or pig DNA.