It’s been another busy week in horse.

Today ABP announced that it’s selling its Silvercrest facility to Kepak. Silvercrest, if you remember, was the plant that produced the Tesco burger that contained 29.1% horsemeat. Its fate has been up in the air since January, when production was suspended with its staff kept on full pay.

The offloading of Silvercrest (or “the Ballybay facility”, as ABP calls it in today’s press release – one suspects the ‘Silvercrest’ brand won’t be around for much longer) marks the closing of one door, and an attempt by ABP to put an understandable amount of distance between it and the horsemeat saga. “ABP Food Group was only one of a large number of leading European operations affected by the equine issue,” it reminded us.

Another such operation is Tesco, of course, which referred glancingly to horsemeat in its full-year results yesterday. It said the scandal had had a limited impact on sales, hitting mainly frozen meat and chilled ready meals. “We have seen customers choosing to substitute some of the directly affected product groups with alternatives, such as fish and poultry,” it said.

Is it possible, perhaps, the scandal has been a bit overblown? The other big horse news this week concerned the results of the European Commission’s random tests on beef products. This survey of 4,144 samples from all 27 member states found horsemeat in just 4.7% of cases.

Not bad, you might think; the UK even got a clean bill of health on the 150 samples it turned in. Except that we know products in the UK have tested positive for horsemeat, so in this case, the EU survey painted a slightly flattering picture.

EU tests for the banned veterinary drug bute, meanwhile, returned positive samples in just 0.5% of cases. Tonio Borg, European Commissioner for health and consumer policy, had a rather sanguine response: “The results have shown that this issue has not been a full safety issue.”

A closer look reveals that the UK and Ireland conducted far more tests for bute than anyone else – 836 and 840 samples respectively, compared to 374 tests conducted by the next closest country on the list: Italy. Greece turned in just 36 samples; Finland 7. In fact, 13 countries gave samples in the single-digits. It wasn’t just that the samples were random, but the number of them too.

So the EU’s test results at best provide only a snapshot. There may be more to come – as happened last week: after we wondered whether the pace had slowed, the Netherlands recalled 50,000 tonnes of beef. But if nothing else, the EU survey may draw a line under the first phase of the saga – and make it easier for companies to start putting that precious distance between themselves and horse.

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