Furniture store says it has removed meatballs as precaution after Czech food inspectors found horse DNA
Ikea has withdrawn a batch of Swedish meatballs from its 18 UK sites and stopped sales from the same run in 12 other European countries after Czech inspectors found equine DNA in a consignment last week.
The Scandinavian furniture store said the clearance in its Swedish food market section of its store was a precaution as it became the latest company caught up in the Europe-wide horsemeat scandal.
Ikea was told by authorities in the Czech Republic last week and refilled its UK shelves with new stock on Friday, although the country's State Veterinary Administration only announced on Monday that it had found evidence of horse during DNA tests on products labelled as beef and pork meatballs from Ikea in the city of Brno.
The consignment of Kottbullar meatballs had not been distributed to consumers, the government body said. Ikea said the meatballs were made by a single Swedish supplier, which it was not naming at present. Ikea said it took the Czech results "showing indications of traces of horse meat" seriously and "immediately issued a sales stop" of the batch in which indications of horsemeat were identified in Czech Republic.
Consignments from the same batch had gone to the UK, Slovakia, Hungary, France, Portugal, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Greece, Cyprus and Ireland.
The group said it had begun its own DNA tests on the meatball range two weeks ago and 12 samples of different batches showed no traces of horsemeat.
"To validate the test results, we are now initiating further tests on the same production batch in which the Czech Republic authorities found indications of horsemeat. We are expecting test results in the coming days and will then be able to give more information."
The horsemeat was found in 1kg packs of frozen meatballs. A total of 760kg of the meatballs were stopped from reaching the shelves.
The group has 18 stores in the UK, and is established in 44 countries with annual sales of £23.6bn.
Ministers from across the EU are meeting in Brussels to discuss the crisis.
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