Amid horse meat concerns lawmakers introduce legislation to stop horse slaughter

The ASPCA, Animal Welfare Institute and the Humane Society of the United States joined Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), Reps. Patrick Meehan (R-Penn.), and Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) as they introduced federal legislation to stop the killing of American horses for human consumption and prohibit the transport of horses across the U.S. border for slaughter.

The passage of Safeguard American Food Exports Act of 2013 would prohibit horse slaughter operations in the U.S., end the current export and slaughter of more than 160,000 American horses abroad each year, and protect the public from consuming toxic horse meat.

A January 2012 national poll commissioned by the ASPCA says 80 percent of American voters oppose the slaughter of horses for human consumption. Yet, last week, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced a plan to process an application for inspecting horse slaughter at a New Mexico facility. If the application is approved Valley Meat Company LLC will be the first facility to slaughter horses for human consumption since 2007 when the few remaining plants closed and Congress suspended funding for any further horse meat inspections.

There is growing concern among American consumers that horse meat will make its way into ground beef products in the U.S. as it has done in Europe. Major companies, including Tesco and Nestle, recalled meat which may have been tainted.

One reason prosecution is so difficult is that retail supply chains have become so complex that pinning down the point at which the crime of mislabeling took place has proved difficult. The factory that supplied Tesco, for example, with its 29% horse "beefburgers" was using "multiple ingredients from some 40 suppliers in production batches, and the mixture could vary in every half-hour", according to the Irish department of agriculture.

The Tesco burgers and those at Burger King, Co-op and Aldi that also tested positive for horse DNA were all made by the ABP group in its Silvercrest factory, in the border area of Ireland. ABP – the initials derive from Anglo-Irish Beef Processors – is the leading processor of cattle in Europe.

The company is owned by the Dundalk-born beef baron and property magnate Larry Goodman. The septuagenarian multimillionaire is famous for hard work, a love of private jets, high-level connections in the Irish government and keeping his business affairs secret. His business employs 2,500 people in the Republic and 8,000 in total in Britain, the Netherlands and Poland, in divisions which also include pet food, rendering and renewable energy from fat. About 50 million Europeans are thought to buy ABP products each week.

Where did the horsemeat in burgers made by ABP come from? The Guardian has discovered that the company bought some of its meat from a Dutch businessman called Willy Selten via a trader who could have been a source. Selten ran a meat cutting plant in the town of Oss, south of Rotterdam. In May, he was arrested by the Dutch authorities on suspicion of fraud and false accounting, when official tests on boxes of meat labelled as beef taken from his factory found horse DNA in 21% of them.

Tesco, Burger King, Aldi and the Co-op have all apologised to customers and said they had been unwitting victims of fraud at some point in their supply chain. They also say the authorities have confirmed there was no food safety issue raised by the adulteration. They refused to answer the Guardian's questions about where the horsemeat in their beef products had originally come from, and whether Norwest or Selten were involved in their supply chains.

An ABP spokesperson said it had not engaged in any illegal activity and that there had been no breaches of law or food safety at Silvercrest. "We have made it clear we have never knowingly bought horsemeat … if equine was deliberately introduced into the food chain, then we are among those who have suffered as a result of such activity."