Zeenews Bureau
Berlin: Even as the horsemeat scandal continues to unsettle the consumers across Europe, a German minister has come up with a remark that could create further controversy over the issue.
German Development Minister Dirk Niebel said that the mislabelled beef products with traces of horsemeat should be distributed to the poor as it would be “irresponsible” to throw away the palatable and safe food, reported the BBC.
The minister said he was in favour of the idea of giving the horsemeat-labelled food to the poor, which was initially proposed by a member of the ruling CDU party.
While no bad health effects have been reported, horsemeat is largely taboo in Britain and Ireland, though in France it is sold in specialty butcher shops.
The minister reasoned that it would not be apt to just chuck away good and safe food saying, “We can`t just throw away good food", said the BBC.
The remark is set to stir a debate on what should be done with tonnes of frozen supermarket meals that have been found to contain traces of horsemeat.
The BBC report added that six tonnes of minced beef and 2,400 packs of lasagne Bolognese seized from a company in Italy were also found to contain Horsemeat DNA.
Earlier, the world`s biggest food producing company Nestle had to pull some of its products off European shelves after they were found to contain undeclared horse meat.
Millions of burgers and frozen meals have been recalled around Europe and many accusations have been made, but so far it`s not clear how horsemeat got introduced into so many beef products.
The scandal came to the light for the first time in Ireland, which reported upto 100 pc horsemeat in products labelled as beef.
The scandal has unsettled consumers and made clear that unscrupulousdealers in the complicated network of meat wholesalers are benefiting from selling much cheaper horsemeat as beef.
With Agency Inputs
