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The Food Programme

Horsemeat - a Food Programme update

The Food Programme

BBC

Arts, Food

4.4976 Ratings

🗓️ 5 November 2013

⏱️ 28 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In January of this year the Food Standards Agency confirmed results showing horsemeat had been found in supermarket burgers. Over the next few days and weeks, more DNA testing would reveal more beef products contained horsemeat.

Ten months on there have been no prosecutions or fines and we're still waiting to be told how the unlabelled horsemeat entered the food chain, and who put it there.

Criminal investigations are underway across Europe, led in the UK by the City of London Police. Most public information on the scandal however has come from two sources, a report by Ireland's Department of Agriculture and secondly, the hours of evidence heard by MPs on the Environment Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee.

The Food Programme explains what we know from these sources and also why an out of court settlement between two companies reveals much about one of the meat supply chains from the Netherlands into the UK.

The programme hears from the Guardian's Special Correspondent, Felicity Lawrence, whose updated book, Not On The Label, gives a detailed account of the scandal.

Reporters Ella McSweeney and Anna Holligan give the latest developments in Ireland and the Netherlands. The Grocer magazine's Julia Glotz, explains how our shopping habits have changed since the scandal and why this proving to be a problem for companies with no involvement in the contamination.

Where are the investigations heading and what chances of successful convictions? These are questions Sheila Dillon puts to Andrew Rhodes of the Food Standards Agency.

The programme is produced by Dan Saladino.

Transcript

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0:00.0

You're about to listen to a BBC podcast and I'd like to tell you a bit about the

0:03.8

podcast I work on. I'm Dan Clark and I commissioned factual podcasts at the BBC.

0:08.6

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0:15.0

What podcasting does is give us the space and the time to take brilliant BBC journalism

0:20.0

and tell amazing compelling stories that really get behind the headlines.

0:23.7

And what I get really excited about is when we find a way of drawing you into a subject

0:28.3

you might not even have thought you were interested in.

0:30.2

Whether it's investigations, science, tech, politics, culture, true crime, the environment,

0:36.1

you can always discover more with a podcast on BBC Sounds.

0:39.7

Hello, I'm Sheila Dylan and welcome to this BBC download of the Food Program.

0:45.8

For information on the BBC's terms and conditions of use, visit

0:49.4

W.W. dot B.C. dot co-

0:52.6

UK slash radio four and now enjoy the podcast

0:59.2

A few weeks ago a teenage orchestra gathered in Scotland, they'd been set a challenge,

1:08.0

to perform a piece of music inspired by a news event that had made a big impact on them.

1:13.4

And so, in a Glasgow concert hall an audience

1:17.2

witness the world premiere of a homage

1:20.2

to the Horse Meats meat scandal.

1:24.0

As well as inspiring a teenage orchestra,

1:27.0

the biggest food fraud of the century

1:30.0

has taken a few other interesting twists and turns in recent days and weeks.

1:36.0

We now come to the next debate I call and Markin.

...

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