LOCAL councils are to blame for driving down food quality with cheap food contracts for schools and hospitals, the boss of Iceland has said.
Speaking on the BBC’s Andrew Marr show, Grange Moor-born Malcolm Walker said the “problem really lies” with councils buying food from the poorly supplied catering industry.
And he insists the supermarkets are not to blame over the horsemeat scandal.
Mr Walker, chairman and chief executive of the Iceland frozen food chain, said horsemeat found so far was ‘contamination’ and the amounts had been ‘minute.’
Speaking on the Andrew Marr Show on BBC1 yesterday, Mr Walker said: “There is no horsemeat in any supermarket products, it is only a microscopic amount.
“It is there because some rogue producers also use their factories to process other products such as horsemeat.”
Mr Walker said asking why retailers didn’t test for horsemeat was like asking why they didn’t test for hedgehog.
Mr Walker said supermarkets sold three levels of food products – premium, standard and ‘white label’ or economy.
He said Iceland, which has stores in Aspley and Trinity Street in Huddersfield, had never sold economy products and added: “We follow our supply chain right through and it’s very short.
“The ready meals are made in our own factories and our meat comes from farms in Wales. We know where our meat has come from.”
Mr Walker said he personally would not eat supermarket economy meat products because they included “rusk or filler or whatever.”
He said the real culprits of the crisis were “one or two rogue suppliers.”
In March last year Mr Walker completed a £1.45 billion takeover of the business he founded more than 40 years ago. Iceland has almost 800 outlets throughout the UK, 23,000 staff and five million customers.
