Although clamour over the presence of meat from horses and pigs in products labelled as beef quietened last week, widespread DNA testing of processed beef products was being conducted by industry local government and, in Europe, politicos discussed the scandal whilst retailers and suppliers continued to withdraw tainted products from sale.

On Thursday (21st February), ahead of the official release of testing results by the Food Standards Agency, North Lanarkshire Council declared that its investigators had detected horsemeat in more frozen beef burgers (though the source of the burger had not been "determined" at the time the discovery was made). Powys County Council also revealed that three samples of beef burger products supplied by The Burger Manufacturing Company (BMC) had tested positive for horse meat at above the 1 percent threshold set by FSA and industry during talks earlier in the month.

FSA said on Thursday, "Further work is being carried out to establish exactly how much horse meat these products contain and to test for the presence of the veterinary medicine phenylbutazone, or bute," adding on Friday "The Agency believes that levels of horse DNA [discovered] indicate either gross negligence or deliberate substitution of one meat for another."

On Friday, the Authority published its second batch of industry testing results. The tests had been carried out at the request of Defra ministers in an attempt to restore public confidence, following a series of meetings between FSA, government ministers and food industry high-ups.

Of 3599 tests conducted by 22nd February, 35 were positive for presence of unlabelled horsemeat, representing a total of 13 products. Products including two frozen ready meals from Aldi, Bolognese sauce on sale at Asda, burgers from the Cooperative and Tesco's burgers and Bolognese sauce all tested positive. Products from catering suppliers and food manufacturers Sodexo, Findus and Rangelands also tested positive.

Friday's test results revealed six more products contained the unlabelled meat. Amongst the withdrawals were catering supplier Makro's MQ burgers labelled as "100% Aberdeen Angus Beef Burgers". Results from the next, and possibly final, round of testing by retailers, wholesalers and caterers will be published on Friday (1st March).

Defra secretary Owen Paterson commented on the results' publication on Friday. He said, "Food businesses from throughout the industry, including retailers, manufacturers, caterers and other wholesalers, are putting enormous effort into getting this testing completed as quickly as possible. It's an important first step from them in rebuilding the certainty and trust that consumers deserve.

"There is more work to be done to find out exactly how this happened and how to make the system much stronger. I will continue to insist on concrete, coordinated action right across Europe when I meet European agriculture ministers on Monday."

However, although Paterson showed support for the food processing industry, and has insisted that a few unscrupulous players are responsible for the scandal, which continued to widen last week, albeit at a slower pace, food experts believe an unsustainable food system is at the root of current problems. For their part, many consumers appear to be siding with the experts; meat buying habits have changed dramatically over the past month, which has seen local butchers and farm shops enjoying three to four-fold increases in custom.   

Commenting on the scandal earlier this month, Professor Karel Williams of the Manchester Business School and the Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change said, "The official line is that horsemeat is not a food safety issue, we are the victims of mafia fraud and the supermarkets should test more. This is both naive and a distraction. The problem is long and constantly shifting adversarial supply chains; the [horsemeat scare] is what academics call a 'normal accident'; inevitable sooner or later because it is inherent in system design. And it is unnecessary because we can have tight control of a short chain and no accidents."