ABP Food Group has announced a major shake-up of its Irish and UK operations in response to the horse meat scandal.

The company’s Silvercrest plant in Ireland - which has been at the centre of the scandal, and was this week ditched as a supplier by both Tesco and The Co-operative Group - will install a new management team and will come under direct responsibility of ABP’s Irish chilled beef division, ABP Ireland. At present, Silvercrest is part of ABP’s convenience foods business.

Meanwhile, the Yorkshire plant implicated in the scandal - Dalepak Hambleton - is to become the direct responsibility of ABP UK, the company’s UK chilled beef division.

In addition, ABP has announced it will now independently audit all its third-party suppliers and has commenced a new DNA testing regime, which will include checks for horse DNA. The company’s Silvercrest plant will be subjected to a deep-cleanse, with all current product to be removed.

ABP announced the shake-up of its operations after the Irish government revealed on Saturday (26 January) that it had traced the source of the horse DNA contamination at Silvercrest to an imported ingredient from Poland.

Irish agriculture minister Simon Coveney said officials had worked closely with ABP management throughout the investigations and there was no evidence ABP had used horse meat deliberately.

Silvercrest has been shut down temporarily since the scandal broke. Coveney said ABP had committed to a number of conditions to production standards at the plant once it reopens. These include the aforementioned deep-cleanse as well as direct scrutiny from government officials for six months, including DNA checks.

Tesco dumped Silvercrest this week after concluding that “the breach of trust was simply too great”. The Co-operative Group, which this week revealed tests had found 17.7% horse in one burger and small traces in three other burgers, also said it had delisted Silvercrest “with immediate effect” because it had specified that all meat in its frozen burgers should be 100% British.

Topics