Moral Panic! - Horse Meat Scandal

How did the scandal emerge?

Irish food inspectors announced in mid-January that they had found horsemeat in frozen beef burgers made by firms in the Irish Republic and the UK, and sold by a number of UK supermarket chains, including Tesco, Iceland, Aldi and Lidl. Since then, a growing number of stores and companies across Europe, including Findus and Nestle, have recalled beef ready meals, after tests found they contained horse DNA. 

How widespread is the problem?

Mislabelled processed meat products have so far been discovered in the UK, the Republic of Ireland, France, Norway, Austria, Switzerland, Sweden and Germany. In the UK, food retailers were told by the Food Standards Agency (FSA) to examine processed beef products soon after the crisis emerged. The scandal affected numerous countries over the world.  

Moral Panic

The horse meat scandal was a big news story and created moral panic in the media. Even though eating horse meat isn't bad for you the main issue is that the consumer was lied to and the producers of the products committed fraud. The media used this story, because it affected a large proportion of the worlds population and they were able to dramatize it for effect. Newspapers used language in their articles to make it seem worse than it actually was. For example, "Italian and Polish mafia gangs are blamed for horsemeat scandal as government warns MORE British products will be contaminated" and stating the scandal to be a "criminal conspiracy". 

 
The article then goes on to state,

"Mafia gangs are suspected of orchestrating an ‘international criminal conspiracy’ worth millions of pounds by passing off horse meat as beef. Mobsters from Italy and Poland are believed to be behind the illegal trade which has led to British consumers eating horse when they believed they were buying beef," and that the meat was "deliberately contaminated".

After the panic, all supermarkets were tested for horse meat and came to this conclusion: 

Some 2,501 tests were conducted but the results announced on 15 February showed that no products other than those already identified contained more than 1% horse meat and the 29 positive results were in seven products that had previously been identified and withdrawn. These included some Findus lasagna as well as some Aldi lasagna and spaghetti bolognese - all made by the Comigel food processing company in France. Some of the products were found to contain up to 100% horse meat.

The media used creative language to dramatise the news story and coming up with different ideas to why this occurred. The link to the mafia in particular sets off fear in many individuals with the idea that criminals are behind it, and if that is true, then we aren't safe. The language used when describing events are a key feature to most moral panics and public scares.

The Future: 

In a more recent article published 4 days ago, it was stated by experts of it possibly happening again! [see full article] 

"The FSA said reports of food fraud - which can include deliberately mislabelling products or selling food which is unfit for consumption - had risen from 899 in 2010 to 1,385 in 2012" and "early indications for the first six months of 2013, when the horsemeat scandal first emerged, show reports of fraud have risen by 28% compared with the same period the previous year". Because it is by the BBC and the scandal is no longer the major news story it is predominantly factual information and there is less dramatic emphasis on how terrible it is, because the hype of the story has ended and the media have moved on to another story to focus on.