Burger King drops supplier linked to horsemeat and Goldman Sachs

LONDON (AP) — British and Irish burger fans could face a Whopper shortage.

Burger King says it has stopped buying beef from an Irish meat processor whose patties were found to contain traces of horsemeat.

The fast food chain said Thursday that it had dropped Silvercrest Foods as a supplier for its U.K. and Ireland restaurants as a “voluntary and precautionary measure.”

Silvercrest Foods, Irish Plant, Suspends Operations After More Horsemeat Found In Burgers

DUBLIN — Food quality officials said Thursday they have identified more horsemeat traces in beef burgers produced in Ireland and pinpointed the problem in an imported ingredient. Ireland’s second-largest manufacturer of supermarket beef patties shut down its production line in response.

The Irish Agriculture Department said nine of 13 burgers analyzed Tuesday tested positive for horse DNA. In a potentially crucial finding, it said seven ingredients added to the product also were tested – and only one, imported from an unspecified European country, tested positive for horse DNA. It said the six Irish-produced ingredients did not contain any equine material.

“Identifying the source of the one (ingredient) contaminated is good news. We’re getting there. The fact that the burgers were contaminated isn’t a surprise, if an ingredient was positive,” said Mike Gibney, director of the Institute of Food and Health at UniversityCollege Dublin.

The processing plant at the center of the controversy, Silvercrest Foods in the Irish border county of Monaghan, announced it would suspend operations indefinitely pending further investigations into why horsemeat keeps getting into its products. The company already has recalled around 10 million beef burgers from supermarket shelves here and its main export market, Britain.

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Last week Silvercrest, owned by ABP Food Group, shut down its production line and recalled 10 million burgers from supermarkets in Britain and Ireland after horse DNA was found in some beef products.

Burger King said the decision to drop the supplier “may mean that some of our products are temporarily unavailable.” It stressed that “this is not a food safety issue.”

The presence of horsemeat in beef is a sensitive issue in Britain and Ireland, which do not have a tradition of eating horses. The British tabloid The Sun reported the Burger King story under the headline “Shergar King,” a reference to a famous racehorse.

Officials say there is no risk to human health, but the episode has raised food security concerns.

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