Tomorrow retailers will be bracing themselves for the latest supermarket share figures, with many worried for all sorts of reasons, not least of all the impact of the horsemeat scandal - and the numbers are not likely to be pretty, according to Kantar Worldpanel’s Ed Garner.

Speaking at the British Frozen Food Federation’s (BFFF) conference on Thursday, Garner said that although frozen food had become the strongest growth area of grocery over the recession, there was “a very large elephant in the room in the shape of a horse”, which he said was more than likely to “p*ss on all the sandwiches”.

“The numbers won’t be pretty when you drill down to processed burgers and ready meals” warned Garner - but he pointed out that this was more than pure consumer reaction, as hundreds of products had been removed from shelves.

He said that the media coverage of people claiming that in future they will shop in farmers markets and butchers’ shops was “all fluff, as that is just what people say they are going to do.” Surveys which are not based on actual sales should be taken with a pinch of salt, he argued, and in the long term, the market would recover.

Nigel Broadhurst, buying director of Iceland also took a bullish attitude. “There are lying, cheating, rotten b**tards who put horsemeat in our previously very good quality products, who are doing it consciously and making a lot of money for themselves,” he said, adding that as the problem spanned across the entire supply chain, it needed to be tackled by all parts of the industry.

He decried the perception that has been promulgated in the media about frozen food in particular and called on a concerted and combined effort for the industry to work together to communicate the quality of frozen food to consumers and to keep innovating. “As an industry, [the frozen food industry] is struggling to persuade the market that great value doesn’t mean cheap rubbish,” he said. “It is time for a correction.”

Tough talk certainly - but nowhere near as tough as the task that lies ahead in terms of actually getting that message across to increasing sceptical shoppers.

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