Horse meat scandal reaches Norway!

Yes, I am afraid Norwegians have also been eating horsemeat without knowing it. So far horsemeat has been found in one cheaply produced frozen ready meal - lasagne. I bet though there will be more revelations before the month is out.

What really surprises me about the news though is that this frozen ready meal is produced and packaged in France before being trucked all the way to Norway. The meat itself comes via another French company which gets its meat from Roumania! It really cannot be cheaper to ship meat from Roumania, make lasagne in France and then ship it to Norway (all the way up to Hammerfest and Kirkenes) than to make frozen lasagne here?

Your average lasagne consists of beef, pasta, onions, tomatoes, milk, cheese, flour and butter.  Two of the products, pasta and tomatoes, have to be imported I would guess, and maybe the beef too as Norway does not produce enough for its own consumption, but there is usually plenty of milk, cheese, flour and butter (OK butter is a sore point for most Norwegians after the butter fiasco Christmas 2011!).  If it is cheaper to produce a lasagne from Roumanian meat in France and ship to north Norway then there is something terribly skewed with the import tariffs and restrictions set by the EU and Norwegian government.

All I can say is, I'm glad I make my own lasagne from scratch!!

By the way, according to a nutrition expert here in Norway, we should actually be happy to eat horsemeat as it has less fat than beef and contains more iron, zinc and vitamin B12!  Wonder when it will be on the supermarket shelves then?


Update on the horse meat scandal here in Norway!

Findus - who dominate the frozen ready meal market here have withdrawn seversl products which use beef. They say they are fully confident in their suppliers but  I guess Tesco's were too!!

Norway is on the EU sidelines as it is not an EU member, but the news about the use of horsemeat has really shocked the government. When it comes to consumer problems, Norwegians can be very tough on a company who appears to be mis-selling aproduct. There is a feeling of 'fairness' which runs through society here, for better or worse. In many ways they are quite naive, expecting the truth to be told.

Anyway, Norway is part of EFTA the European Free Trade Association, which encompasses many European countries including those which are not part of the European Union (e.g. Switzerland). Confusing? Well I guess to non- europeans it must seem so!

So Norway has a hiking boot in both camps, the EU and non EU (known as EFTA). EFTA has an office known as the ESA or EFTA Surveillance Agency. This agency ensures that countries within EFTA subscribe to international trading requirements. The ESA has issues with horse meat! So now all EFTA countries have to take tests of pre-prepared meals and submit results within a certain time frame to satisfy EFTA rules - which tend to mirror EU rules. I wonder how many bureaucrats are actually needed to provide this information - reckon there is a whole office of them!!


I will update this post as time rolls by!



Update on the horse meat scandal here in Norway!

Norway is not a member of the European Union, but in order to trade with them they have to agree to most of the rules and regulations that the EU requires. However, it is not the EU that requires some kind of follow-up on whether horse meat is being used in Norwegian food stuffs but EFTA, the European Free Trade Association. Apparently EFTA have an ESA or 'EFTA Surveillance Agency' (sounds a bit like 1984 to me!) which monitors trade between all European countries (not all are in the European Union). So Iceland (which like Norway is outside of the EU but part of EFTA)  and Norway are going to make random tests on products and report back to ESA who will share the findings with the EU.

Bureaucracy flourishes!

Look forward to hearing what they find if ever it becomes public knowledge.