LONDON (AP)
-- British and Irish burger fans could face a Whopper shortage. Burger
King has stopped buying beef from an Irish meat processor whose patties
were found to contain traces of horsemeat.
The
fast food chain said Thursday it had dropped Silvercrest Foods as a
supplier for its U.K. and Ireland restaurants as a "voluntary and
precautionary measure."
Last week Silvercrest,
which is owned by ABP Food Group, shut down its production line and
recalled 10 million burgers from supermarket shelves 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 company added that
there was "no evidence to suggest any of the Silvercrest product
supplied to Burger King was affected" by the horsemeat contamination.
Rival McDonald's said it does not buy beef from Silvercrest or other affected suppliers.
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.
Products
from another Irish firm and one in Britain also were contaminated by
horsemeat. Most had only small traces, but one burger of a brand sold by
the British supermarket chain Tesco contained 29 percent horsemeat.
Irish
food officials say an ingredient imported from an unspecified European
country and used as filler in cheap burgers is the likely source of the
horsemeat contamination.
Burger King says its patties are made from 100 percent beef.
Officials say the horsemeat poses no risk to human health, but the episode has raised food security worries.
More
concern arose Thursday when lawmaker Mary Creagh, environment
spokeswoman for Britain's opposition Labour Party, said that several
horses slaughtered in the country last year had tested positive for
phenylbutazone, an anti-inflammatory drug given to horses that can cause
cancer in humans.
"It is possible that those animals entered the human food chain," she said.
The
Food Standards Agency confirmed that meat from five horses had tested
positive for the drug, but said none had been approved for sale in
Britain. It said the relevant food safety authorities were informed in
cases where the meat was exported to other countries.
The agency said no horsemeat in the current scandal contained phenylbutazone.
Very little horsemeat is sold in Britain but the country sends thousands of horses a year abroad to be killed for meat.
Copyright 2013 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
