Russian sanitary official attacks EU food quality control system
MOSCOW. Feb 26 (Interfax) - An official at Russia's Federal Service for Veterinary and Phytosanitary Surveillance (Rosselkhoznadzor) has attacked the European Union's food quality control system and claimed that scandalous recent illicit sales of horsemeat are not the only stain on its record.
"There have been such facts - for example, there is information that in British prisons convicts were given beef with additions of pork and that so-called beef was certified as a halal product," Alexei Alexeyenko told Interfax.
The EU quality control system cannot follow the entire manufacturing process from ingredients onward, he said.
Pork that is put in beef products is usually meat that is not used in making pork products - various bits and pieces, for instance, according to Alexeyenko. "This creates a great risk for the quality of products," he said.
The recent horsemeat scandal means that EU food industries use meat "from unknown sources [that] poses a danger to human health," Alexeyenko said.
He said phenylbutazone had been detected in some of the beef that contained illicit horsemeat. "This drug, which is, as a rule, used to treat racehorses, must not be part of human food," Alexeyenko said, adding that one could find "a cocktail of drugs" in the meat of racehorses.
