UnNews:Ikea corraled into horse-meat scandal
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| Ikea corraled into horse-meat scandal | 
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26 February 2013
STOCKHOLM, Sweden -- Swedish furniture giant Ikea became entangled in Europe's widening horse-meat scandal Monday, as regulators suspected the chain's meatballs of containing the mystery meat.
Testers in the Czech Republic found unspecified trace amounts of horse DNA in packages of meatballs that were supposed to contain only cow and pig DNA. Meatballs from the same batch were sent to 12 other European countries, resulting in a continent-wide food scare.
Ikea's trademark blue-and-yellow megastores sell a variety of assemble-your-own furniture consisting of different assortments of the same planks (sometimes referred to as "saw" horses). However, the stores also have don't-assemble-your-own restaurants serving Swedish delicacies such as meatballs, lingonberry jam, and lutefisk, a substance that has never tested positive for horse DNA other than sea horses.
Ikea stores in the U.S. and Canada were not affected, as North Americans love the furry quadriped. This reporter himself has $20 on Jenny's Fantasies in the fourth race at Pimlico, and has boxed it and the other two favorites to win or place. Ikea spokesman Ola Larsson said the company was conducting its own DNA tests and wouldn't comment further until it has those results. She said everyone at corporate headquarters has been tested. "Ve pretty süre dat you not gonna' find no horse DNA," she concluded.
However, protests emerged outside Ikea megastores in Korea when Czech authorities admitted that the tested samples contained no dog, cat, or snake DNA at all.
European authorities say the crisis is a labeling problem but poses no human health risk. That is why shipments must be destroyed until the European Union can devise more stringent labeling rules and hire hundreds of new label readers, label inspectors, violation-notice writers, and administrative judges, driving SUV's with 200-horse engines.
Health officials all over the world are waiting for the other hoof to drop in this latest food-safety scandal. A single bloody hangnail somewhere in a slaughterhouse would mean that trace amounts of human DNA would also be present in the world's meatball supply, requiring the entire human race, except those willing to admit to being cannibals, to be coerced into vegan lifestyles until regulators devise workarounds.
Sources[edit]
- Karl Ritter "Ikea withdraws meatballs in more than 20 countries". Associated Press, February 25, 2013