Oregonian Haruspex wrote:
>


>
> Ikea meatballs were implicated in the tainted / adulterated meat
> scandal that rocked Europe a few years back as containing donkey meat.
> I wouldn't mind eating donkey meat, if I knew that I was, and that it
> was from a clean animal.
>
> As it stands, I wouldn't eat them again. One incident of tainting is
> enough to taint my perception of a food brand for good.

So much fail...

1. The USA Ikea meatballs were not implicated in any sort of scandal.

2. The European Ikea meatballs were caught up in the mislabeled horse
meat scandal a year or so ago.

3. There was never any allegation or finding in the EU mislabeled horse
meat scandal that the horse meat in question was tainted or unfit for
consumption in any way. There was talk of the horse meat possibly
containing a veterinary drug not allowed in meat for human consumption,
but as far as I recall reading there was never a sample of meat tested
that had any notable traces of that drug.

4. It was found that the horse meat involved in the EU scandal was
properly labeled as horse meat when it cleared customs from it's country
of origin on it's way to a distributor in France, and apparently
relabeled / mislabeled in France.

So ultimately the issue was one of mislabeling / mixing / substitution
of cheaper horse meat for more expensive cow meat. Given the UKs issues
with mad cow disease, the substituted horse meat may have been safer,
and was really only an issue for those with religious or emotional
dietary restrictions.

The horse meat substitution scandal did lead to a lot of testing of
various meat for sale which uncovered other issues like cross
contamination, including in meats labeled kosher / halal which is
probably a more significant issue than the horse meat.