From Iceland — Makers Of "Meatless Meat Pies" Say Testing Was Flawed

Makers Of “Meatless Meat Pies” Say Testing Was Flawed

Published January 7, 2014

The owner of the food company that was found last year to be selling “meat pies” that contained no meat says he is “100% certain” that there was in fact meat present.

Magnús Níelsson, the owner of food production company Kræsingar, told DV that if he would “pay for a hundred tests” of his meat pies. He added that the bad press his company received resulted in Kræsingar (at the time known as Gæðakokkar) “making 18 million ISK in February [when the story broke] and 2 million in March.”

As reported, last year’s “horse meat scandal” which swept across Europe led to numerous food production companies being inspected, both in Iceland and other in European countries. Gæðakokkar was amongst them, and when their “30% real beef meat pies” were inspected, it came to light that the actual percentage of meat was zero.

While the news brought praise from environmentalists for producing convincing-tasting “meat” that was not actually meat, Magnús insists there was meat in the pies.

Magnús points out, for example, that only one meat pie was randomly selected for inspection. Furthermore, he contends that his company follows the strictest standards, telling reporters, “[The inspectors] took all our books, and it is very easy to see it all when our recipes are compared to the products we buy. All of our books are 100% correct. Therefore I can be 100% certain that there was meat in this filling.”

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