A business owned by the family of the Queen's master of horse, Lord Vestey, has confirmed it supplied beef contaminated with horsemeat to one of Britain's largest private catering businesses.
The peer has been chairman of the Vestey Food Group since 1995 and, according to the official website of the British monarchy, the master of the horse is the senior officer of the royal household who is responsible for the royal mews and the Queen's carriages and horses.
The company, which has been owned by the Vestey family since it was founded in 1897, sold minced beef and minced halal beef containing more than 1% horsemeat to Sodexo, which provides food for public services including the armed forces, schools, care homes and prisons.
In a statement Vestey Foods UK said "it has supplied Sodexo with meat products manufactured by GA international Food Service and that in co-operation with the FSA [Food Standards Agency], a programme of DNA testing on manufactured beef products from all our beef suppliers has been in place for some weeks." The company said further test results were due at the end of the month.
Sodexo announced on 22 February that it was withdrawing all frozen beef products across most of its business following the discovery of horse DNA in one of the samples it had tested.
But it had declined to name the supplier of the beef product which tested positive for horse DNA and would not say if it was a British or Irish manufacturer. The government also refused demands from MPs to name the supplier.
A spokesperson for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said: "It would have been inappropriate for government ministers to disclose information that could have been potentially affected the FSA investigation."
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