The Food & Environmental Hygiene Department is considering prosecuting two retail outlets caught selling beef laced with sulphur dioxide for the second time recently.

The Centre for Food Safety collected 290 pork and beef samples for tests from July to September and found 15 beef samples tainted with sulphur dioxide. It later took follow-up samples and found the same problem in beef from the two outlets.

The department is contemplating legal action.

It took the samples after recent reports of significant differences in the retail price of fresh beef, and suspected the use of sulphur dioxide in frozen beef for sale as fresh produce.