How much horse meat?
It's a simple enough question, but the media, the public and even government officials are having trouble understanding just how much horse meat is in some processed food. Ian Farrell makes sense of the confusion
The horse meat scandal broke in January this year, when beef products from the likes of Findus, Tesco and Iceland were found to contain a fair proportion equine-origin meat. Since then, horse meat and food fraud have continued to make headlines, but the way the story as reported by the press can be confusing.
Finding out how much horse is in a food sample is not as straightforward as you might think. The newspapers wrestle with the data from scientists, and struggle to make it understandable to the layman. Even the officials investigating the sample and the politicians have trouble getting their heads around the concepts.
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