A CLIFTON mum believes her son might have eaten horse meat after it was revealed furniture giants Ikea had sold meatballs containing it.
Dawn Nadin, 29, visited Ikea at Giltbrook Retail Park a week ago and fed a couple of meatballs to her 19-month-old son Lewis.
Though it hasn't been revealed if that branch had sold meatballs with horse meat in, Dawn believes her son might have eaten it at some other time.
And she isn't alone as a survey has revealed a third of parents nationally believe they might have served horse meat to their children.
Dawn, who ran the Nottingham Mums and Mums-To-Be page on Facebook until recently, said: "He has probably eaten horse meat now.
"As long as tests show it doesn't contain tranquillisers it's fine.
"The only concern I have is if the horse shouldn't be in the food chain. The fact it's horse when it's been sold as something else also bothers me. I like to know what I eat."
The poll, by parenting website Netmums, questioned 1,293 parents about the horse meat scandal.
Meanwhile, Ikea has repeated its commitment to selling high-quality food.
The company has withdrawn a batch of meatballs in its UK stores. They were labelled as beef and pork and were in 1kg frozen packs sent to the Czech Republic for sale in Ikea stores there.
The Czech Republic's state veterinary administration found traces of horse meat as part of its testing programme – leading to 760kg of meatballs being stopped from reaching the shelves.
Ikea has said meatballs will still be available in its stores, and only one batch was being withdrawn as a precaution until further tests were done.
A spokesman said internal tests had shown no problems up to now.
He said: "Ikea takes the test result from the Czech Republic authorities showing indications of traces of horse meat seriously.
"The concerned production batch of meatballs has been withdrawn from the Swedish Food Market in the Ikea stores."
The spokesman added: "Ikea is committed to serving and selling high quality food that is safe, healthy and produced with care for the environment and the people who produce it.
"We do not tolerate any other ingredients than the ones stipulated in our recipes or specifications, secured through set standards, certifications and product analysis by accredited laboratories."
Netmums food editor Cathy Court said: "This could shape up to be the biggest crisis in food production in modern times. It shows no signs of abating and may even overtake the BSE issue which many of today's parents will remember from when they were growing up."
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