Horsemeat found in Ikea Meatballs

Cheap furniture is not all they are selling. How about a little old horse with your swedish meatballs?

No word on whether U.S. stocks were affected. Caveat emptor.


http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2013/02 ... c=rss&_r=0

The horsemeat scandal is throughout Europe, in all sorts of ground meat products. I saw last week that Aldi frozen foods, like lasagna, in Europe were involved. No idea if they sell the same frozen food in their stores in the US.

Here is a great introduction to horsemeatgate: http://www.foodpolitics.com/2013/02/the ... -politics/

toria wrote:No word on whether U.S. stocks were affected.

Except for this bit:

The New York Times wrote:Ikea spokeswoman Ylva Magnusson said meatballs from the same batch had gone out to Slovakia, Hungary, France, Britain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Italy, Greece, Cyprus and Ireland. Magnusson said meatballs from that batch were taken off the shelves in Ikea stores in all those countries. Other shipments of meatballs were not affected, including to the U.S., even though they all come from the same Swedish supplier, Magnusson said.

Most of the articles are silent on whether the U.S. is affected. How could the meatballs come from the same plant or supplier and not be affected? Something is rotten in Denmark.....err Sweden here.

toria wrote:Most of the articles are silent on whether the U.S. is affected. How could the meatballs come from the same plant or supplier and not be affected? Something is rotten in Denmark.....err Sweden here.

Because a plant, a supplier, and a manufacturer are not all the same things. Burger King announced that it sold hamburgers in Europe that contained horse meat. That doesn't imply that their burgers here do.

Good points. I bet people here will think twice though before buying or eating the meatballs. Its a PR nightmare even if not the case.

Swedish meatballs are explicitly designed for low-quality meat, which is diluted by starches like bread and potatoes and flavoring. I think horse is delicious though, so that's probably why I remember those meatballs were so good when I lived in Sweden. Also in the brief time I worked at a student restaurant in Uppsala, Sweden, we served questionable cheap pub burgers (dressed often with salad dressing or mayo lol) that my co-workers told me were mostly horse or donkey. At the time I thought they were joking, but now I'm not so sure. I do have very fond memories of how good they were, particularly the lyxburgare of the Norrland's student pub, which was an abomination of garlic dressing, a fried egg, and meat, but have been unable to re-create them to my satisfaction here. I have had horse several times since (Gastronauts in NYC and Joe Beef in Montreal) and it really is delicious, as it has a sweetness lacking in other meats, so it could have been the horse meat. Of course these days I like to know where my meat comes from so I don't know if I could still enjoy those questionable Swedish pub burgers and meatballs. I was always impressed by Europe's food regulations, but apparently they are not enforced very strictly. I guess whether this stuff ends up in the US will come down to how good USDA's inspection service is. It will be interesting to see what happens.

Stephen Colbert calls the European Horsemeat Sweepstakes (at 1:50 in the video):

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colber ... at-scandal