2013 horse meat scandal situation. The Food Standards Agency's (FSA) chief executive, Catherine Brown also said "it is unlikely we will ever know" how many unwittingly ate horsemeat. Tesco's market value dropped by . European Union officials, European ministers and Commissioner (Tonio) Borg set up an urgent meeting in Brussels on 13 February 2013 on how to contain the horse meat scandal that exposed flaws in European control systems on food safety, and to formulate an action plan. Following the meeting, EU agriculture ministers announced a three-month programme of DNA testing of processed meat across the European Union. The plan calls for 2,500 random
Tesco biofuels, offering petrol-bioethanol and diesel-biodiesel blends instead of pure petrol and diesel at their petrol stations, and now offering Greenergy 100% biodiesel at many shops in the southeast of the United Kingdom. In 1998, Tesco and Esso (part of Exxonmobil) formed a business alliance that included several petrol filling stations on lease from Esso, with Tesco operating the attached shops under their Express format. In turn, Esso operates the forecourts and sells their fuel via the Tesco shop. As of 2013, there were 200 joint Tesco Express/Esso sites in the UK. In 2018, Tesco launched a separate budget chain, Jack's,