February 18, 2013

Waitrose to build UK capability for frozen meat products range

Waitrose announced the building of its own UK capability to produce a range of frozen meat products, which is expected to be operational within the next three months and will be based at Dovecote Park's state of the art facility in Yorkshire.

Dovecote Park has been exclusively supplying Waitrose since 1997 with high quality fresh beef products including fresh burgers, steaks and joints. All the beef processed by Dovecote Park is sourced from a known and trusted group of British farmers - none of the beef is bought on the open market.

In recent weeks Waitrose has taken the precautionary action of removing two frozen meat products, beef burgers and meatballs - not produced by Dovecote Park - from its branches. The frozen beef burgers were put back on sale after tests confirmed that the meat in the product was 100% beef. More recently, one test on frozen meatballs showed that the meat in them was, as it should be, 100% beef. However, another test indicated there may be some pork in some of the meatballs and the product was therefore taken off sale. Neither frozen beef burgers nor frozen meatballs tested positive for horsemeat.

Mark Price managing director commented, "Our customers rightly expect the highest standards of product quality and integrity from us and we will not let anything stand in the way of our delivering this.

On 30 January, Waitrose withdrew its meatball product relating to the June batch and commissioned Elisa tests, which was used to identify proteins specific to pork. Results from samples from meatballs made in both June and August, delivered on February 4, "indicated above 1% pork" although tests by the factory using the same technique had showed negative for pork contamination. All batches of the affected product were withdrawn from stores.

In an open letter to customers on Wednesday, Waitrose managing director Mark Price said, "We have now done tests on 40 of our meat products, no horsemeat was found in any of these tests. We did, however, discover that in just two batches of our essential Waitrose frozen British beef meatballs (480 grams), some of the meatballs may contain some pork. In fact, one of the tests carried out showed that the meat in the meatballs was, as it should be, 100% beef."