All processed meat - along with all imported beef - has been taken off the menu in Medway’s schools amid the horsemeat scandal.

Medway Council’s catering firm Chartwells told schools yesterday that it is now only using beef from the UK and Ireland.

As an extra measure, the council has also banned all processed meat from its school meals until further notice.

The move comes six weeks after concerns were first raised about horsemeat being sold as beef.

Chartwells is still carrying out a DNA testing programme across all its processed meat products to test if any contain horse.

The firm supplies more than three-quarters of schools in the Towns, with the rest using other firms or in-house catering.

One of more than 80 schools thought to be affected in Medway is Luton Junior School, where a beef dish similar to meatballs was replaced with vegetarian pizza yesterday.

However, head teacher Davinder Jandu said she trusted Chartwells and the menu would soon be back to normal with British and Irish beef.

"It won’t have a huge effect," she said. "In terms of the bigger picture I think it’s probably one item a week.

"We’ve had quite a good experience with them, when we plan the menu we make sure we have a roast dinner every week.

"When I first came I had a meeting with them about things I wasn’t happy about and they were very proactive and they were able to sort out the things that needed to be addressed very quickly."

Chartwells signed a three-year, £5m contract with Medway Council to provide school meals in June 2009. It was later extended to July 2014.

The firm began investigating after its parent firm, the Compass Group, said it supplied a Rangeland burger product containing horse to sites in Ireland and Northern Ireland.

A Medway Council spokesman insisted the move was a precaution, and there was no suggestion there was any horsemeat in the meals which have been withdrawn.

He added: "The majority of meals provided to pupils are freshly made on the school premises and do not involve processed meat."

Food Standards Agency tests have showed 29 out of more than 2,500 products contained more than 1% horsemeat, with the cause put down to a large-scale criminal fraud reaching across Europe.

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