Several processed meat products have been withdrawn from sale after horsemeat was detected The government's response to the horsemeat scandal has been criticised as "flat-footed" by a group of MPs.They have called for greater testing of products to reassure people there is not a threat to human health.
The Commons Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee also said that if criminals were illegally passing off horsemeat as beef they were unlikely to be applying adequate hygiene standards.
Ministers insist there is no evidence of a risk to health.
'Broader spectrum'The committee said the public appeared to have been "cynically and systematically duped" for financial gain by parts of the food industry.
It said in a report: "It seems improbable that individuals prepared to pass horsemeat off as beef illegally are applying the high hygiene standards rightly required in the food production industry.
"We recommend that the government and FSA undertake a broader spectrum of testing for products found to have the highest levels of contamination... to provide assurances that there is no other non-bovine DNA or any other substances that could be harmful to human health present."
Continue reading the main story Experts say horsemeat is as safe to eat as beefThe Food Standards Agency (FSA) has ordered food businesses to check for horsemeat in all processed beef products, such as burgers, meatballs and lasagne. The first set of results are expected on FridayThere is concern that some horses are given a drug called bute (phenylbutazone) which can be dangerous to humansIn rare cases it causes a serious blood disorder known as aplastic anaemia, where the body does not make enough new blood cellsAnimals treated with phenylbutazone are not allowed to enter the food chain for this reasonThe Food Standards Agency has ordered Findus to test its beef lasagne that contains horsemeat for buteResults are expected imminentlyThe MPs criticised the way the government and the Food Standards Agency (FSA) had dealt with the crisis since horsemeat was discovered in some supermarket beef products last month.They said: "Whilst ministers are properly responsible for policy, the FSA's diminished role has led to a lack of clarity about where responsibility lies, and this has weakened the UK's ability to identify and respond to food standards concerns.
"Furthermore the current contamination crisis has caught the FSA and government flat-footed and unable to respond effectively within structures designed primarily to respond to threats to human health."
The committee called for the FSA to be given statutory powers to force producers to carry out testing.
Committee chairman Anne McIntosh said the scale of contamination in the food chain was "breathtaking".
Last year, the committee called on the government to set out plans to prevent illegal meat imports.
It said then: "The agriculture minister's evidence suggested that it was inevitable that that wrongly labelled or unlawful meat products would be importing into the UK to replace UK produced [banned] desinewed meat."
Shadow environment secretary Mary Creagh said the report was a reflection of government cuts at the FSA.
'Unacceptable situation'A Defra spokesman said: "We have been working urgently with food businesses, police and authorities across Europe to get to the bottom of this unacceptable situation.
Owen Paterson said DNA testing will reassure consumers that the food they buy has been properly labelled"Once we have established the full facts we will take whatever action is necessary so that this unacceptable situation cannot happen again."
Tim Lang, professor of food policy at City University, London, said the Food Standards Agency needed to be strengthened.
He told the BBC's Newsnight: "It's not been doing its job. We need more inspectors, they've been slashed and cut. We can't have the industry policing itself, that's what's gone wrong. The big food companies didn't actually have the control they said they had."
European ministers have agreed plans for EU-wide random DNA testing of meat products for horsemeat as well as for the equine drug "bute".
The move was welcomed by UK Environment Secretary Owen Paterson who said it was "completely intolerable" that products marked as beef actually contained horsemeat.
The FSA will announce the results of tests for bute in horses slaughtered in the UK on Thursday morning.
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