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Tainted Irish meat delivered to Swedish schools

Less than a day after authorities warned consumers in Sweden to avoid pork products from Ireland due to the possible presence of dioxin, it has emerged that Swedish school children may have already eaten some of the tainted meat.

Published: 9 December 2008 15:49 CET
Tainted Irish meat delivered to Swedish schools

On Monday, Swedish food company Findus announced it was recalling a host of its products containing Irish pork.

Wholesaler Servera, a major distributor of Findus products, in turn reviewed its list of nearly 20,000 clients only to discover that several schools may be among those that received deliveries.

“We’ve identified 152 customers. It can be to schools, nursing homes, or hospitals. It’s only a fraction of our customers,” said Servera purchasing manager Nils Berntsson to the TT news agency.

Specifically, Servera is tracking 726 packages of “Biff Lindström” and Swedish meatballs.

Servera’s Berntsson didn’t know how many of the packages may have already been consumed by Swedish school children or hospital patients.

“We’re going to be getting in touch with all of our clients within the next several hours. Obviously, we think this it’s terrible to be in this situation and for our customers have been put in a difficult position, but unfortunately it’s out of our control,” he said.

Louise Nyholm, an inspector with Sweden’s National Food Administration (Livsmedelsverket) can’t rule out that the tainted meat has already been eaten.

“We can’t say that with certainly that that is not the case,” she told TT.

“We don’t really know how widespread it is, so right now I can’t say [how much meat is involved]. We have our toxicologists involved in this and after we know more we can estimate how it might affect the population.”

So far, Findus has been hardest hit by the Irish pork warning, being forced to recall several products from store shelves and commercial distributors throughout Sweden on Monday.

On Tuesday, the European Union’s food safety body, EFSA, was brought in to investigate the scope of the impact caused by the contaminated Irish pork.

The EFSA is currently conducting a risk assessment and is expected to issue a statement on Wednesday as to whether any additional measures will be necessary.

The pork recall comes following the discovery of the cancer-causing agent dioxin in various samples of Irish meat tested in France.

Irish authorities later traced the dioxin to poisoned feed consumed by pigs on several farms in Ireland.

While dioxin is known to cause cancer, the Food Administration’s Nyholm stressed that people who may have consumed meat containing the toxin need not be too worried.

“Dioxin is a toxin which isn’t healthy for us. Therefore we should limit the amount we ingest. But if you consume it on one particular occasion, it’s not dangerous,” she said.

“There’s no acute toxic effect but rather it something which could be dangerous if it accumulates over a long period of time.”

FOOD AND DRINK

OPINION: Are tips in Sweden becoming the norm?

Should you tip in Sweden? Habits are changing fast thanks to new technology and a hard-pressed restaurant trade, writes James Savage.

Published: 5 April 2024 13:59 CEST
OPINION: Are tips in Sweden becoming the norm?

The Local’s guide to tipping in Sweden is clear: tip for good service if you want to, but don’t feel the pressure: where servers in the US, for instance, rely on tips to live, waiters in Sweden have collectively bargained salaries with long vacations and generous benefits. 

But there are signs that this is changing, and the change is being accelerated by card machines. Now, many machines offer three preset gratuity percentages, usually starting with five percent and going up to fifteen or twenty. Previously they just asked the customer to fill in the total amount they wanted to pay.

This subtle change to a user interface sends a not-so-subtle message to customers: that tipping is expected and that most people are probably doing it. The button for not tipping is either a large-lettered ‘No Tip’ or a more subtle ‘Fortsätt’ or ‘Continue’ (it turns out you can continue without selecting a tip amount, but it’s not immediately clear to the user). 

I’ll confess, when I was first presented with this I was mildly irked: I usually tip if I’ve had table service, but waiting staff are treated as professionals and paid properly, guaranteed by deals with unions; menu prices are correspondingly high. The tip was a genuine token of appreciation.

But when I tweeted something to this effect (a tweet that went strangely viral), the responses I got made me think. Many people pointed out that the restaurant trade in Sweden is under enormous pressure, with rising costs, the after-effects of Covid and difficulties recruiting. And as Sweden has become more cosmopolitain, adding ten percent to the bill comes naturally to many.

Boulebar, a restaurant and bar chain with branches around Sweden and Denmark, had a longstanding policy of not accepting tips at all, reasoning that they were outdated and put diners in an uncomfortable position. But in 2021 CEO Henrik Kruse decided to change tack:

“It was a purely financial decision. We were under pressure due to Covid, and we had to keep wages down, so bringing back tips was the solution,” he said, adding that he has a collective agreement and staff also get a union bargained salary, before tips.

Yet for Kruse the new machines, with their pre-set tipping percentages, take things too far:

“We don’t use it, because it makes it even clearer that you’re asking for money. The guest should feel free not to tip. It’s more important for us that the guest feels free to tell people they’re satisfied.”

But for those restaurants that have adopted the new interfaces, the effect has been dramatic. Card processing company Kassacentralen, which was one of the first to launch this feature in Sweden, told Svenska Dagbladet this week that the feature had led to tips for the average establishment doubling, with some places seeing them rise six-fold.

Even unions are relaxed about tipping these days, perhaps understanding that they’re a significant extra income for their members. Union representatives have often in the past spoken out against tipping, arguing that the practice is demeaning to staff and that tips were spread unevenly, with staff in cafés or fast food joints getting nothing at all. But when I called the Swedish Hotel and Restaurant Union (HRF), a spokesman said that the union had no view on the practice, and it was a matter for staff, business owners and customers to decide.

So is tipping now expected in Sweden? The old advice probably still stands; waiters are still not as reliant on tips as staff in many other countries, so a lavish tip is not necessary. But as Swedes start to tip more generously, you might stick out if you leave nothing at all.

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