1 March 2013

We have received a few queries from people concerned about the recent stories in the news about horse meat found in processed beef products.

The recent incident involving horse meat is something which is concerning but does not pose a risk to health according to the Food Standards Agency. So far no positive test results for horsemeat have been reported in Free From products.

We have also had concerns over the use of the drug phenylbutazone, ‘bute’. During the recent horse meat incident, no horses treated with bute entered the food chain for use in the UK. The samples taken during the recent incident have been checked for the presence of phenylbutazone and the samples came back negative.

Incidents like this can cause concern and mistrust about labelling of foods however there are strict rules around labelling gluten-free, and also about declaring allergens including gluten containing ingredients (wheat, rye, barley and oats) in the ingredients list. Whilst the recent incident is a serious issue in terms of food labelling, this does not mean that manufacturers are not complying to allergen labelling laws. Deliberate mislabelling of foods in terms of allergens is monitored very carefully and detected very early due to the health effects that would be reported by consumers.

Product recalls do occur from time to time and these are investigated to make sure they do not happen again. These tend to be rare, and are mainly due to errors in labelling rather than the incorrect ingredient being present in a product.

Horse meat, like all meat is naturally gluten-free so does not pose any health risk for people with coeliac disease.

You can keep up to date with news on this topic on the Food Standards Agency website.