Horsemeat scandal reaches high court in Ireland
Irish beef processing firm ABP begins legal action against Polish supplier over tainted beef that ended up in Tesco burgers
Felicity Lawrence
The Guardian, Thursday 12 September 2013 19.21 BST
Food Service supplied meat to one of ABP's plants which made Tesco beefburgers that were found to contain 29% horsemeat. Photograph: Niall Carson/PA
The Irish beef processing firm at the heart of the horsemeat scandal has begun legal proceedings against a Polish supplier for sending it tainted beef.
ABP said Food Service supplied meat to its Silvercrest Foods factory in County Monaghan. The plant made beefburgers for Tesco that tests showed to contain 29% horsemeat.
ABP also announced on Thursday that it had reached a financial settlement with the Cheshire-based trading company Norwest Foods for supplying Silvercrest with beef that contained horsemeat.
ABP has said that some of the horsemeat in its supply chain came via Norwest from a Dutch factory owned by Willy Selten, who was arrested and questioned in May on suspicion of fraud and laundering horsemeat into beef.
Food Service, which is facing legal action in the high court in Dublin, did not respond to phone calls. In a statement, Norwest Foods confirmed that it "may have unknowingly and unwittingly supplied contaminated beef products contrary to the terms of Norwest's contract with ABP" and that it had apologised to the Irish firm.
Neither party would discuss the size of the financial settlement, which they said was subject to a confidentiality agreement.
ABP's chief executive, Paul Finnerty, said: "ABP has always insisted that it never knowingly provided beef that contained equine DNA to any of its customers. This was confirmed in the findings of the department of agriculture, food and the marine's report of March 2013."
