Daily BrewIKEA pulls meatballs from stores after horse meat found in tests
The meatballs that had customers lining up at IKEA stores for a bite while furniture shopping now has them turning up their noses.
The beloved furniture store has been dragged into a growing horse meat scandal as the company pulls its Swedish meatballs out of European stores in 13 countries, according to Reuters.
IKEA tested its meatball supply in the Czech Republic and found it contained horse meat. The company stopped sales of the product in Britain, Portugal and 11 other European countries but it has not extended the order to stores in Canada, according to the National Post.
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The horse meat scandal has become a rolling ball of public relations disasters that's already smashed into several companies. Burger King recently admitted burgers at some of its European chains contained traces of horse. Tesco, a supermarket giant in the U.K., apologized after testers found horse meat in their burgers, too.
An Italian company that sells frozen lasagna was next in the chain reaction, but in a trend that seems consistent with these cases, that company said its meat came from an outside supplier that had, in turn, used its own outside suppliers.
Still, Canada's meat market is clean thus far, according to researchers who tested samples of burgers at restaurants and grocery stores in early February.
The mess could lead consumers to take a second thought about the path meat takes before it reaches our mouths — and what animal it comes from in the first place.
