Europe's horse meat scandal

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 17 January 2023

⏱️ 9 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In 2013, horse meat was discovered in Irish beef burgers. The scandal snowballed and within six weeks horse meat was found in beef products in more than a dozen European countries. The story revealed how complex and unregulated Europe’s meat industry was, making it a target for fraudsters. Ben Henderson speaks to Alan Reilly, former Chief Executive of the Irish Food Safety Authority, who uncovered the scandal. (Photo: Meat inspection in a French supermarket. Credit: Sebastien Bozon via Getty Images)

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hello and welcome to the witness history podcast from the BBC World Service, with me, Ben
0:09.2	Henderson.
0:10.7	Ten years ago this week, it was revealed that Irish beef burgers contained horse, the scandals
0:16.3	snowballed and within six weeks engulfed more than a dozen European countries.
0:21.5	One man found himself at the heart of it.
0:23.8	I'm sitting in the office and I'm just wondering what are we going to do now.
0:30.7	This was really my worst fear.
0:32.2	I just thought, God heavens, how am I going to explain this to ministers, to the public
0:39.0	and so on.
0:40.5	It was a bit of a rabbit in the headlights type syndrome thinking, what do you do now?
0:45.8	That's Alan Riley.
0:47.0	He was chief executive of the Irish Food Safety Authority, the organisation that uncovered
0:51.8	the scandal.
0:53.0	This was the reaction.
0:54.0	We don't know where the horses have come from or if they've died naturally or a disease.
0:59.0	We don't know anything.
1:00.0	They just put it in and expect everybody else to take it and eat it.
1:03.5	Fifty thousand tons of beef have been recalled by the Dutch Food Safety Authority has been
1:09.0	deemed unfit for human consumption and may contain horse meat.
1:13.2	Alan was shocked by the discovery, but the mislabelling of products wasn't completely
1:17.6	unheard of.
1:18.8	The global food supply chain is a huge complicated network.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.