Shocking news that Findus frozen beef lasagne was more dobbin than daisy is the latest revelation in the escalating crisis concerning processed meat products. While watching the news last night, and feeling thankful that supper was home-made Spanish omelette and not a French-made freezer meal, I was reminded of a previous meat-based crisis, that of BSE in the 1990s. At the time a packaging printer provided PrintWeek with a quote that sticks in my mind to this day, saying:  “We’ve put a hold on every sheet with the word ‘beef’ on it.” I’m imagining something of a replay is happening at a number of print sites this very day. As various brand owners scramble for their crisis management manuals, one might reasonably suppose this is going to be pretty impactful for print suppliers, too. Findus has withdrawn 380,000 packets of its ‘beef’ lasagne. All this supposedly perfectly safe food is apparently being destroyed, rather than re-labelled with a more accurate ingredients listing and sold in countries where they don’t say neigh (sorry) to horse, such as Belgium or back in France. There’s an awful lot of empty freezer space out there in supermarket land at the moment, and those gaps could become even bigger if the scandal spreads even further. The Food Standards Agency is now demanding authenticity tests on all processed beef products, to be carried out by this time next week. Those empty spaces will need to be filled asap with food that is what it says it is. Will brands tainted by this scandal put something, either a new design element or perhaps a label (how about “now contains 100% less horse”), on the packaging of their replacement batches as a clear message to consumers? One might reasonably suppose that customers will also turn to food producers with a better record when it comes to provenance, resulting in increased demand for those products and, yes, additional print runs.