In Iceland, Horse-Meat Testing Finds Something Even Worse: No Meat

In Iceland, Horse-Meat Testing Finds Something Even Worse: No Meat

You’ve heard of “Meatless Mondays.” But you may not be as familiar with meatless meat pies – unless you’re in Iceland.

The tiny nation’s Food and Veterinary Authority, or Mast, investigated in mid-January a beef pie from high-end natural food company Gaedakokkar in western Iceland to make sure there were no traces of horse meat in the wake of the wider scandal that has ensnared a number of European companies.

The good news: the agency found no horse meat in the pies. The bad news: the agency actually found no meat at all. In fact, there were no traces of animal protein found at all, Hjalti Andrason, a MAST official, said in an interview Friday.

Labeling on the products promised that the pie stuffing contained 30% beef. The agency suspects the filling “could be some sort of vegetable protein, but that is not confirmed,” Mr. Andrason said.

The discovery dealt a tough blow to Gaedakokkar, which employs 10 people and has been around since 1999. Stores carrying Gaedakokkar’s products threw out the company’s products and the company’s phones have been ringing since the disclosure of MAST’s findings.

Gaedakokkar’s owner Magnus Nielsson said the development has punctured his business model.

“It’s sad that MAST takes one pie from one store and then goes out and just kills me in the news,” he told The Wall Street Journal Friday. “MAST went into one store and bought one pie, which they tested. They sent us a mail and I was shocked.

Mr. Nielsson said “we are a small company and everybody’s trying to do their best. We went through our production and discovered that the way we mixed the beef pie stuffing–by hand–didn’t mix the stuffing evenly enough.”

He said the pie stuffing mixing was immediately moved to a machine that mixes the stuffing evenly. But the damage to the company’s reputation is already done and that his company, which makes about 60 different food products without additives, now may go out of business as customers cancel business.

Gaedakokkar is based in in Borgarnes on the western end of Iceland and started out as a company making high-end organic food products. Initially the company’s meat balls contained only meat, but Mr. Nielsson said that after the financial crisis that hit Iceland, the company was forced to add vegetable stuffing and soy protein to its minced meat products to bring the price down for cash-strapped Icelandic consumers.

Following the discovery of the meatless meat pie, Mr. Nielsson says vegetarians have called him and said that the company should focus on making vegetarian pies.

“But we make meat pies and there should be meat in them, that’s what we do,” Mr. Nielsson said.

Now it is up to the Municipal Health Authority in Western Iceland to decide what further actions to take in the matter.