FOOD SAFETY : HEALTH FEARS RAISED OVER AMERICAN HORSEMEAT IMPORTS.

An animal welfare group is alleging that unsafe horsemeat is ending up on European dinner plates due to lax controls by North American and EU authorities. The Humane Society is trying to raise awareness among EU lawmakers and officials about the complex supply chain in which horses from the United States are transported to Canada and Mexico for slaughter, with their meat then being exported to the EU. This poses a threat to consumer health, the Humane Society's Cheryl Jacobson told Europolitics, because some 90% of horses in the US are treated with phenylbutazone, an anti-inflammatory drug whose use the EU bans for all animals intended for human consumption. In addition, as the US does not require records to be kept of the medical treatments horses receive, the only way to know they have not been given banned substances is to test 100% of consignments but this does not happen, Jacobson said.

The issue is already on the European Commission's radar. Audits conducted by the Commission's Food and Veterinary Office in 2011 and 2012 in Canada and Mexico concluded that the monitoring and controls systems did...