Burger King Drops Horse Meat Firm In UK and Ireland

Fast food giant, Burger King, announced on Thursday that it would be dropping one of its meat providers that has been embroiled in a scandal in the UK and Ireland for supplying grocers with beef mixed with horse meat. The BBC reported that Irish supplier ABP Food Group continues to insist that there is no evidence that meat provided to Burger King was contaminated.

The popular fast food chain announced that they would be dropping Silvercrest, a subsidiary of ABF Food Group, and replacing its products from other suppliers. In a statement released on Thursday, the company said, "While this is not a food safety issue according to findings from the Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI), upon learning of these allegations, we immediately launched an independent investigation that is currently on going."

"As a precaution, this past weekend we decided to replace all Silvercrest products in the UK & Ireland with products from another approved Burger King supplier," the statement continued. "This is voluntary and precautionary measure. We are working diligently to identify suppliers that can produce 100 percent pure Irish and British beef products that meet our high quality standards."

According to the BBC, ABF said it would also be conducting an internal investigation and that "it remained entirely focused on that task." FSAI said the contaminated meat came from two processing plants, Liffey Meats and Silvercrest Foods, in Ireland and the Dalepak Hambleton plant in Yorkshire, UK.

The contaminated meat, which posed no risk to human health, had been on sale in Tesco and Iceland in the UK and in Dunnes Stores, Lidl and Aldi in Ireland. According to the BBC, 27 burger products were analyzed with 10 of them containing traces of horse DNA. Twenty-three burger products contained pig DNA.

Fox News reported that Tesco immediately withdrew products by its supplier Silvercrest and that is "was working with authorities and the supplier to urgently understand how horse meat came to be in the product."

Silvercrest and Dalepak have said that they will launch their own investigation into two continental European third-party suppliers, the BBC reported.