Meatball Derby in IKEA

Swedish furniture giant Ikea became entangled in Europe’s widening meat scandal Monday, forced to withdraw meatballs from stores across Europe amid suspicions that they contained horse meat

The company reacted after authorities in the Czech Republic said they had detected horse DNA in tests of 1-kilogram (2.2-pound) packs of frozen meatballs that were labeled as beef and pork. The Czech State Veterinary Administration said it tested two batches of IKEA meatballs and only one of them contained horse meat. It did not say how much.

Meatballs from the same batch had been sent from a Swedish supplier to 12 other European countries — Slovakia, Hungary, France, Britain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Italy, Greece, Cyprus and Ireland — and would be pulled off the shelves in all of them, IKEA said.

Stores in the U.S. and Canada were not affected, IKEA said.

In another related news, Burger King pledges that DNA testing will ensure that its "BK Quad Stacker" hamburger has four provably all-beef patties.

Just to be clear: Burger King (BKW) says there is no horse meat in its burgers. And just to make sure, Burger King says it plans to test its beef patties for foreign DNA, including horse, pork, and lamb.

Burger King said in a statement today that while the beef it sent to a lab in Germany earlier this month tested negative for any equine DNA, it decided to drop Silvercrest after learning this week that a small percentage of beef the vendor had sold to the chain came from a non-approved supplier in Poland, rather than the 100 percent British and Irish beef patties it had undertaken to provide.

The scandal began in Ireland in mid-January when the country announced the results of its first-ever DNA tests on beef products. It tested frozen beef burgers taken from store shelves and found that more than a third of brands at five supermarkets contained at least a trace of horse. The sample of one brand sold by the British supermarket kingpin Tesco had more than 25 percent horse meat.




Note:  5,700 tons of horse, mule and donkey meat produced in Romania in 2012 and mixed with beef and sold in Europe.