What price convenience indeed....
Well, to be fair, other than cultural preferences for what meat gets put on the table, there is nothing wrong with eating horse meat. Plenty European countries eat it and it was common in the UK as recently as the 1940's.
So what's the problem then? For me there are two problems....
The media - who on one hand are making this out to be a huge public safety issue and then in the next breath telling us all that the horse meat is perfectly safe. The ludicrous BBC sending a reporter to stand on a country lane in the middle of nowhere to tell us all about the fact that wagons full of meat drive down the lane was priceless. What you don't hear from the media is the second problem I have with the whole thing and probably the most important...
Being told what we are being sold! I wouldn't care if my lasagne was made of horse meat if that was what was on the packaging and that is what I had intended to buy. But to buy something and then find out that you actually got something which you neither wanted nor find acceptable as a meat for consumption is totally different. How long I wonder has horse meat been used to bulk up beef products? I have just heard on the news it has been at least 2 years! What else is being used as a substitute for what it is meant to be? There have been reports of pork being used in supposedly halal meat supplied to prisons - so this company was not just breaching the law but offending religious beliefs. Do we really know what is in your favourite burger or fried chicken nuggets? What about the toppings on your pizza? Or the filling in your sandwich? Come to that, what is the bread made of (apparently sliced white bread has ground chicken feathers in it but that could be urban myth).
I was under the impression that food labeling was very strict and if so how have companies been able to get away with it? Well - to my mind it is the pure dishonesty and greed of the producers. Horse is cheaper than beef and we are still in recession - if they can get away with it and make more profit then they are going to. But why has there been such a widespread problem? Well that's simple - supermarkets pricing and convenience foods.... I (quite smugly) have no concerns - I haven't eaten a ready meal for many years. Our meat comes from a local butcher who can tell you exactly where the meat has come from, our bread is home made and our eggs come from our own chickens. Our milk could be from the Fat Tony Rat Dairy - who knows! But many families eat ready meals and processed food pretty much every day - whether due to convenience or finances. It's so much easier to get everything from the local superstore than go to a butcher and get decent fresh meat, and so much easier to get frozen meals than buy the ingredients and make things yourself. There may not be a health issue with eating horse but there are a large amount of people in the UK who don't want to.
This is a huge wake-up call for the food industry. Butchers are already reporting increases in sales - I'm not surprised... but how long before the supermarkets get their customers back by selling poor quality cheaper 'real meat'?
It has to be remembered that the government have only ordered testing for horse meat... so the beef lasagne made with horse will be detected, but a cottage pie made with dog meat will not. I think there may be bigger scandals than horse meat in the near future.....
