Waitrose has relaunched the frozen beefburgers and meatballs it pulled from shelves during the horsemeat scandal.
Packs of own-label British quarter pounders, Aberdeen Angus quarter pounders, 2oz British burgers and British meatballs were due to return to freezers at the end of this week after a five-month hiatus.
Waitrose’s entire frozen beef offer was removed from sale in February after the retailer found traces of pork DNA in Essential Waitrose frozen meatballs. From now on, the supermarket will source all frozen beef for its own-label products from Dovecote Park - as it already does for fresh beef - instead of relying on a network of other companies to process and package the meat.
“The frozen products are now coming from the same place as the fresh ones,” said Waitrose frozen buyer Michael Simpson-Jones. “The supply chain is fully traceable from the field to customers’ freezers.”
Waitrose said the quality of the products had also improved thanks to the methods used at Dovecote, which gave the meat a “homemade, lean quality”.
“We want to make sure we offer the same quality in fresh that we do in frozen,” said Simpson-Jones.
Cardboard packaging had also been replaced with resealable bags that used up less space in consumers’ freezers.
To reassure customers in the aftermath of the horsemeat scandal, Waitrose put stickers on its own-label chilled beef to flag up its British provenance, but waited until Dovecote’s frozen facility was up and running before it reintroduced its own-label frozen beef.
The frozen burger category suffered a 9.2% fall in value year-on-year in the four weeks to 12 May on volumes down 16.2% across the major retailers [Kantar Worldpanel].
Waitrose was not implicated in the horsemeat scandal.
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