Ikea withdraws batch of meatballs

Furniture giant Ikea has withdrawn a batch of its traditional meatballs from sale in its UK stores after horse meat was discovered by Czech authorities.

The Swedish company said meatballs would still be available to buy in its stores and only one batch was being withdrawn as a precaution until further tests on it could be done.

A spokesman said internal tests had shown no problems up to now.

::snipping2::

The firm said it had issued "a sales stop" of the concerned batch in Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, France, Portugal, Italy, Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Greece, Cyprus, Ireland as well as the UK.

The meatballs were labelled as beef and pork and were in one-kilogram frozen packs sent to the Czech Republic for sale in Ikea stores there. The Czech Republic's state veterinary administration found traces of horse meat as part of its testing programme. A total of 760 kilos (1,675lbs) of the meatballs were stopped from reaching the shelves.

more here - http://www.independent.ie/world-news/europe/ikea-withdraws-batch-of-meatballs-29093014.html

It doesn't mention the US. I wonder if anyone is checking meat products in the US for horse. So many products and no indication of where the components come from.