The “absolute assurances” that Burger King’s burgers were not part of the contamination problem, therefore, has proven less than absolute. The meat supplier is Irish-based processing company, Silvercrest, part of ABP Foods Groups. They went wrong, apparently, when they use a non-approved meat supplier from Poland, in which traces of horse meat, and also pork, was found to have gotten into the meat.
“Within the last 36 hours, we have established that Silvercrest used a small percentage of beef imported from a non-approved supplier in Poland” said Burger King.
“They promised to deliver 100 percent British and Irish beef patties and have not done so. This is a clear violation of our specifications, and we have terminated our relationship with them.
“Through our investigation, we have confirmed that this non-approved Polish supplier is the same company identified by the Irish Department of Agriculture as the source of Silvercrest’s contamination issue.
“We are deeply troubled by the findings of our investigation and apologize to our guests, who trust us to source only the highest quality 100 percent beef burgers.”
In such words, Burger King’s vice president attempted to salvage the trust broken between the restaurant and the public. That they so vehemently denied the accusations, only to later admit them, doesn’t exactly bode well for trust, but they are at least taking drastic measures to dispose of all meat that is possibly contaminated, and shipping in new meat from Germany and Italy for their UK outlets.
Silvercrest, for their part, also expressed shock at the Polish supplier, saying “Customers are our absolute priority this is why we immediately withdrew these products until such a time that we could verify that there was no risk to our customers.
“We are deeply angry and feel let down by our supplier and we are pursuing more tests until we are certain that we understand how the production line was contaminated.”