News: Ikea’s meatballs now free of horse meat

Ikea’s meatballs are now free of horse meat, according to Edward Mohr, the company’s chief food executive. The meatballs have returned to Ikea’s stores in Sweden, Denmark and Finland and will be back in all Ikea stores in Europe by April.

Top image: Wikimedia Commons

Thankfully for those of us living in the States, the meatballs served in Ikea’s U.S. stores never contained horse meat. But customers in the European stores were understandably outraged upon discovering the meatballs contained horse meat last month.

The horse meat in Ikea’s meatballs traced back to a Polish meat company. Mohr said that Ikea has now implemented new supply chain controls to ensure that a more “farm to fork” approach is taken in sourcing food for the stores.

I suppose it’s comforting that the store is putting more stringent food control measures into place, but shouldn’t those measures have been implemented to begin with? What do you think, Horse Nation? Has your taste for Ikea’s meatballs been soured by this scandal?

Click here to read the full Reuters story. And for those interested in how the whole horse meat scandal in Europe unfolded, check out this really cool infographic from the Australian Institute of Food Safety. Click the image to view it larger.