Greeks second to French in inadvertently consuming horse meat, report shows
Some 111 tons of horse meat made their way onto the Greek market in 2011 and 2012, a report by the Hellenic Statistical Authority presented in Parliament on Tuesday by Deputy Agriculture Minister Maximos Harakopoulos has revealed.
The majority of the horse meat over the two-year period entered the Greek market from Romania, Spain and Bulgaria, the report showed.
Harakopoulos said that food inspections will be intensified to test not just products sold as pure beef but also those said to contain beef for horse DNA.
According to a report by the European Commission quoted by Harakopoulos and sources in the EU, the highest incidence of horse meat in products not labelled as containing it was found in France, with one in eight beef products testing positive for equine DNA.
Greece ranks second, according to the statistics presented by the deputy minister, as 36 out of 288 (12.5 percent) recent inspections carried out by the National Food Authority revealed the presence of horse meat.
The European Commission is due to announce the results of tests ordered throughout the bloc in the wake of the outbreak of the horse meat scandal later on Tuesday.
