It would seem that the company are claiming it was an administrative error. Trust them to proffer such a lame and anodyne excuse as that. I remember working on the horsemeat scandal a few years back. I learned a lot about how meat is certified, labelled and controlled right the way through the chain from rearing and slaughter to supply and delivery. Some suppliers of food products were tainting (with horse) meat slush / protein powder used as a bulking agent in predominantly low end products. A change in the law in Romania had seen many horses made redundant as they were essentially banned from serving as transport on public roads / highways. The impoverished Romanian farmers sent the unwanted nags to the knacker's yard, supposedly to be boiled down into glue, and the knackers sold them on to shady people who put them into the human food chain. So you see there's no point in "flogging" a dead horse(in one sense of the word) - unless it seems you're a food products supplier with absolutely no ethics or conscience whatsoever and stand to make a shed load of money! They certainly didn't seem to care that the majority of (non-comestible) Romanian horses were treated with an agent that is highly carcinogenic to humans.
A few years has elapsed since the days of that scandal and I think people have dropped their guard in the possibly misguided belief that it's all OK now. It is really something when the only way of knowing what's in your food is to conduct a DNA analysis.
Some strict vegetarians would no doubt argue that humans that consume the dead flesh of animals are getting what they deserve, but are they? If consumers are misled about the provenance and ingredients of what goes on their plate, surely the responsibilities rest elsewhere in the chain?
It could be argued that you get what you pay for, and to a large extent, I agree with that. But let us not forget that QVC tout the QUALITY of their foods, and usually the ethics and sourcing, too. If there was cheap / inferior / tainted stuff in Q's so-called "premium" offerings (with the premium prices to match) it would be altogether more shocking. I would hazard a guess that the meat in question wasn't presided over by the old Duke of Buccleuch (or however you spell it) but probably by some bloke called Dumitru from a poor part of of a former Eastern bloc country.
