Horse meat scandal: retailers may face prosecution Catherine Brown, the chief executive of the FSA, said: "It is the industry's responsibility to get this right, not the Government's. The results show that the overwhelming majority of beef products in this country do not contain horse. The examples we have had are totally unacceptable, but they are exceptions. At least 1 per cent horse meat was found in 15 frozen Findus lasagnes that were sourced from Spanghero, a meat processing and wholesale company based in Castelnaudary, southern France. Six other products from Tesco, Aldi, Co-op and the Irish producer Rangeland also tested positive and been withdrawn from sale. The results did not include horse meat found by Whitbread, the hotel group, in its meat lasagnes and beefburgers. The company, which owns Premier Inn, Beefeater Grill and Brewers Fayre, said the products had been removed from their menus. It had sent 30 products to be tested. The lasagnes were supplied by Creative Foods, a company that also caters for schools and hospitals. It is now testing its own-brand lasagne amid concerns that it could also be contaminated. A spokesman for the company said yesterday that it had severed relations with Pinnacle Foods, the company that supplied the mince meat used in the lasagnes. The FSA asked retailers to test the highest-risk products first. Any tests that showed 1 per cent or more horse meat were considered positive. Miss Brown said: "That is a pragmatic level above which we think any contamination with horse meat would be due to either gross incompetence or deliberate fraud; it's not going to be accidental." She admitted that even trace contamination with other meat species could present problems for some religious followers, such as Jews, Muslims and Hindus. "In terms of faith groups, there remains a significant issue about trace levels of other species below 1 per cent," she said. The FSA also ordered tests for pork in beef products, but did not say whether there had been any positive results. None of the contaminated meat has so far tested positive for bute, a veterinary painkiller used in horses that has been linked to cancer. The FSA said it was also carrying out its own "rigorous sampling" because of concerns that "criminal elements" were involved in the retail chain. It has asked local authorities to carry out a further 224 tests on samples taken from a range of retailers.