The horse meat scandal has been billed as a lesson in the inadequacies of our modern food supply chain. But it’s also a live case study – on a mega scale – of the varying approaches to crisis management PR.

When news of the horsemeat scandal broke last month, Tesco immediately held its hands up and apologised. CEO Philip Clarke took to the blogosphere and ads were placed in the national newspapers. There could be little faulting its humility and proactivity in tackling the bad press head-on. With such a fast-moving story, time will tell whether this was the right approach, but it appears to have worked.

Findus, on the other hand, has taken an entirely different approach - reviewing and regrouping before it speaks out.

The result? It has been heavily criticised for battening down the hatches while the storm rages on, sparking calls for non-executive chairman Dale Morrison to break his silence (read Labour MP Tom Watson’s ‘Eight Questions For Private Equity Investor And Boss Of Findus Dale Morrison’.)

Even Lyndon Lea, partner at Lion Capital, which owns a third of Findus, criticised Findus’s handling of the situation: “I am enormously frustrated, yes. In any Lion-controlled investment we would not have handled the PR in the manner it has been handled by Findus,” he told Sky News earlier this week.

Finally, this afternoon Morrison issued the following statement to The Grocer: “Our focus remains as it has been throughout this issue - to establish the facts about what has gone on, to be transparent about the problems with our products, to communicate with our customers because we know we have let them down and to take all necessary steps to make sure this never happens again.”

It fails to answer Tom Watsons’ – or The Grocer’s questions – and at best it’s reassuring. But one can’t help feeling it comes after the horse has bolted. 

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