The horsemeat scandal six months on: what’s changed?

Have you eaten more fish fingers? And are you making more lasagnes at home? A recent report has revealed some expected – and unexpected – effects of this year’s shocking horsemeat scandal.

Remembering the scandal

Industry experts IRI released their snapshot report to coincide with the six-month ‘anniversary’ of when the horsemeat story first broke back in late January. Lovefood, like everyone else, covered it at the time and wondered whether supermarkets would suffer from the scandal, and predicted a move towards shopping at independent butchers.  

We all remember the immediate effects of horsemeatgate – Tesco’s very public apology and product withdrawals (mainly frozen beef burgers and frozen lasagnes) from supermarkets including Aldi, Asda and even Waitrose, although the latter was just for ‘precautionary’ reasons. After extensive testing, the European Commission announced that up to 5% of EU products labelled as beef contained horsemeat.

Farewell burgers and ready meals...

IRI, who were commissioned by meat-free products company Quorn, looked at data from the past six months to assess the long-term effects of the saga. Almost immediately after the news first broke (on 16th January this year) sales of frozen burgers plummeted, registering year-on-year declines in sales of close to 40%, or 125 tonnes, in each week since.

Both premium burgers and standard burgers are still taking a hit, with the latter being most affected – the ‘value’ beef burger sector has virtually vanished altogether. Frozen ready meals have also dropped (on average by 13% per week since mid-February) with little sign of improvement so far.

Peculiarly, sausages are another casualty of the scandal (their rate of decline fell to -22% in the 12 weeks following the scandal) even though no sausage products were directly mentioned as having contained horsemeat. Poor old bangers have been tainted by association, it seems.

Fresh meat sales were relatively unaffected (disproving our more-people-will-visit-the-butcher theory), apart from an immediate but very short-lived switch away from beef. But interestingly beef in minced form has seen a higher price rise than other forms of beef, presumably as some people switched to better quality mince.

...Hello pasta and fish fingers

In an even more bizarre turn of events, fish fingers saw a 12% volume growth year-on-year in the week of the initial announcement, before gradually dipping again along with the rest of the frozen fish category. And rice sales grew by an average of 7% from the last week of January before settling back down in recent months.

Dry pasta, having been in low level decline during 2012, saw an impressive growth in March, with packs of lasagne sheets up by a whopping 32% year-on-year. Put off by the prospect of finding a horse hair in their frozen lasagnes, people must have decided to make their own from scratch instead – no bad thing, in our opinion (and this is our favourite recipe).

The rise of the reluctant vegetarian

But perhaps the biggest beneficiary of the horsemeat scandal has been the meat-free market. An increase in sales was noticed at the time and the trend is still going strong six months later – IRI reported a ‘healthy’ growth in the sale of Quorn products (a frozen, defrosted and fried Quorn 'chicken' fillet is pictured left), a company which saw an opportunity and deliberately increased advertising spend while the saga was going on.

Sarah Pittock, Insight Director at IRI, commented: “The meat-free market has undoubtedly benefited from the horse meat scandal, experiencing an increase in sales of 20% over the previous period when news of the scandal first broke."

She added: "The industry benefited from on-going communication from leading manufacturers, such as Quorn, that meat-free can be added to a non-vegetarian’s repertoire as a healthy alternative, with all of the same functionality and taste.”

What else has changed?

Having been well and truly slapped on the wrist by the Food Standards Agency, all meat-producing companies must now analyse their beef products for undesirable ingredients. In addition, UK food retailers have to DNA test their beef and report the results to government ministers every three months.

As for us consumers… well, we want honesty. Meat manufacturers and supermarkets alike have a hell of a lot of work to do to regain consumer trust, the key to which is transparency and the greatest possible traceability. We want to know which field the cow that made our beef burger stood in, and we want that field to be as local as possible.

As Tim Eales, Director of Strategic Insights at IRI, writes in the conclusion of the report: “A distinguished provenance can be a powerful motivator for a consumer to purchase. Even a name that infers ‘local’ or a description that invokes ‘memories of the countryside’ will attract additional custom, especially if it can be backed up with strong credentials.”

Why has no-one been arrested?

Six months on, and no arrests have been made over the scandal. This week Anne McIntosh, Chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, said on BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "I think it's just shocking that we still don't know at what point the contamination entered the food chain, and we don't want it to look as though the perpetrators have got away with it."

Ms McIntosh claimed to be "staggered" by the lack of evidence collected by the authorities, which has rendered them powerless to make arrests. She also asked for assurances from the police that prosecutions will be mounted as soon as evidence of fraud or other illegal activity is found.

In the report published by Ms McIntosh's committee on Tuesday (July 16), the introduction of regular but random DNA testing conducted by supermarkets was recommended, the results of which would be posted online. 

How did the horsemeat scandal affect you? Has it made you buy more meat-free products? And are you annoyed by how slow the investigation is going? We’d love to hear from you, so talk to us in the Comments box below.

Quorn image courtesy of Jan Ainali

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