IKEA Singapore stops selling meatballs amid horsemeat scare

SINGAPORE: The Singapore branch of Swedish home products company, IKEA, said on Tuesday the meatballs at its cafeterias here contain only beef and pork sourced and produced from Australia.

It has sent its meatballs for DNA tests — to make sure they do not contain horsemeat.

But as a precaution, the IKEA branches here have stopped selling meatballs at their cafeterias for the time being.

Mike King, regional commercial manager at Ikano Retail Asia, a franchise of IKEA Global, said: "The supply of meatballs for IKEA in Singapore is from a separate supply that we source ourselves.

"So we have two (types of) meatballs that we sell in Singapore — one is a beef and pork (meatball) that’s sourced from Australia and one is our halal meatball that we sell at the Tampines store which contains a mixture of chicken and beef which is also sourced from Brazil and Australia.

"Of course all our supplies provide us with verification of exact ingredients but as an additional measure we have submitted them for this DNA testing to be absolutely 100 percent sure."

On Monday, IKEA stopped selling meatballs at nearly all its store cafeterias across Europe, after traces of horsemeat were found.

It is part of a widening scandal in Europe where horsemeat has made its way into products labelled as beef.

IKEA Singapore said the test results, which will be ready by the middle of next week, will confirm that there are no indications of horse meat in the meatballs.

However, most people whom Channel NewsAsia spoke with do not seem too concerned.

"Although there are concerns, it will not deter me from eating the IKEA meatballs in Singapore," said one of IKEA’s customers.

— CNA/ck/xq/al