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Owen Paterson: "There may well be an international criminal conspiracy"
The environment minister says he is "absolutely determined" to get answers about food testing in the UK at a summit into the horsemeat scandal.
Owen Paterson is meeting retailers and the Food Standards Agency (FSA) to ask how "beef" products containing up to 100% horsemeat were sold.
He said he he hoped for "meaningful results" on Friday from tests ordered on all processed beef products.
Aldi, Tesco and Findus have all withdrawn certain products.
Mr Paterson told BBC News he had called leaders of the FSA "and all the main retailers to sit down and go into detail about how the current system works".
He said he would find out "just how much testing goes on along the chain to establish how we could improve the current regime within the existing system".
The government-ordered testing of all processed beef products on sale in the UK was "a very big request - we'll have to look at lab capacity and other practical issues", he added.
"I really want to get to the bottom of this because I'm very proud of our British farming industry, the traceability through the system, rigorous production systems in our own industry.
"And I do not want to have any slur cast on them because there may have been either incompetence or what I suspect may well be criminal activity elsewhere."
The FSA has also said it was "highly likely" criminal activity was to blame for the contamination while the Met Police has said it will not launch an investigation "unless it becomes clear there has been any criminality".
The French authorities have been slow to react. But on Friday the French Ministry of Agriculture did finally issue a statement. It considers the issue "a matter of criminal fraud" and the authorities will be investigating.
The question - as yet unanswered - is how horsemeat ended up in the beef chain. Was there confusion between the two meats - beef and horse - that were processed in the same plant? Or, as is more likely, was Comigel duped by a third party supplier?
There is also a wider issue for the European authorities. The rules on labelling for meat products are fairly straightforward. But the rules are less clear on the provenance of meat when it comes to the ingredients of processed products. And food analysts are now calling for a review.
Since Comigel also supplies the Benelux, Scandinavian and Eastern Bloc supermarket chains, this is fast becoming a European problem.
Horsemeat may not pose a significant risk to humans but the health of European food processing is very much open to question.
Morrisons boss Dalton Philips, speaking outside the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs before the meeting, said the supply chain had become "far too complex".
"There is a role for testing and we're very supportive of the testing regime but it's a moment in time," he said.
"The truth is you've got to know your farmer, you've got to know where your meat's being processed."
Labour leader Ed Miliband said in a statement that, "after the immediate issues, we need to understand how it happened and what needs doing to ensure it doesn't happen again".
"The job of government is to grip the situation and give families the reassurance they are after."
Meanwhile, it has emerged that Findus knew about horsemeat in its products for a week before it told the FSA.
The company has admitted that test results from 29 January showed traces of horsemeat in its beef products.
At that point, it stopped taking the products from French supplier Comigel and stopped sending them to retailers.
More thorough testing was carried out - including the DNA testing of raw material at Comigel's factory - and the results were confirmed on Wednesday. The FSA was informed that same day.
Findus had already recalled its lasagne products two days earlier because of concerns raised by Comigel
The FSA said Findus had tested the meat in 18 of its beef lasagne products and found 11 meals in which it contained between 60% and 100% horsemeat.
Findus has taken out space in a number of national newspapers, in which is updates customers and says it is "sorry that we have let people down".
'Very shocking'Mr Paterson told BBC News he would not comment on Findus until he had a full report from the FSA but added that, "if any retailer knowingly has products which are mislabelled, that is very wrong."
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Morrisons chief executive Dalton Philips: Food supply chain 'too complex'
On Friday, supermarket chain Aldi said tests on its Today's Special Frozen Beef Lasagne and Today's Special Frozen Spaghetti Bolognese showed they contained between 30% and 100% horsemeat.
These had already been withdrawn after the warning from Comigel.
In other related developments:
The controversy surrounding contamination of meat products has also affected firms in the UK, Irish Republic, Poland and France.
Last month, Irish food inspectors announced they had found horsemeat in some burgers stocked by a number of UK supermarket chains, including Tesco, Iceland and Lidl.
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