Ikea Swedish Meatballs Discovered to Contain Horse Meat

First Burger King, then hospitals and schools and now IKEA: Officials have announced that traces of horse meat have been found in the furniture giant's meatballs.

The latest discovery was made by inspectors in the Czech Republic today when they found traces of the unwanted ingredient in frozen meatballs made in Sweden that were designated to be shipped to IKEA stores. In fact, meatballs from the same batch found by officials were shipped to several countries including Slovakia, Hungary, France, Britain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Italy, Greece, Cyprus and Ireland. After learning about the bad batch, the meatballs were promptly removed from IKEA stores in all of those countries. Unfortunately, there's no telling how many people bought the meatballs and already consumed them.

According to IKEA, other shipments were not affected--including shipments to the United States. Even though they come from the same Swedish supplier, officials were quick to note that they weren't from the same batch as the others.

This latest horse meat finding is only the latest in a string of findings that stretches back several months. Authorities have found horse meat on pizza in Denmark, and last week the Swiss food giant Nestle and frozen food maker Birds Eye were forced to withdraw products from supermarkets in Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom when horse meat was found, according to USA Today. The most revealing case was when BBC's "Panorama" television program led an investigation to find out exactly where Findus' beef lasagna came from. They discovered that the "beef" had started in Romania--except that the beef wasn't really beef; it was horse. The meat was relabeled as beef when it left Transylvania, even though the company that produced the meat said it was confident that its products that were 100 percent horse were clearly labeled as such.

Currently, Agriculture ministers from the European Union are meeting in Brussels in order to address the growing horse meat crisis. More stringent rules for ingredients labeling could be one of the answers to help prevent unwanted ingredients from sneaking into products.

Although this crisis has mainly affected countries overseas, it could also affect the U.S. Our country currently imports meat from all over the world, which could allow horse meat to eventually sneak into the market, just as it did in Britain.