Horse meat?

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onymee

onymee

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seriously, apart from the fact that people have paid for beef and got something else, just what is the problem over here with eating horse meat? From a personal level, I have eaten it in Germany and found it tasty. Surely, it is better for the animal to be reared over here, then have a fast fear/pain free death and be sold here, than to go to a dealer or market, get transported all around the country until he has enough, then sold to an exporter, on another lorry, then on a ferry, then another long road journey getting stressed and afraid , hungry and thirsty, then be unloaded at a strange foreign abattoir, handled roughly and killed in full view of each other? Abattoirs over here are not wonderful places and much more should be done to ensure the animal's welfare at all times (compulsory CCTV in all areas, inspected by officials periodically). But death after only a short journey, not in view of other animals, has to be preferable surely? I've watched some pretty horrific videos of how horses were treated and handled when being unloaded at an Italian abattoir and it really is horrific! They have no problem killing pregnant mares for example :(
 
The problem being, was the horse raised for human consumption. They could have died from disease or be road kill or full of who knows what hormones. Farmers in this country that do it legally have all sorts of forms and restrictions to deal with.
My local butcher is landed this has happened as his trade is well up.
 
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Donkeys are made into sausages here.
 
One of my sons used to slaughter from 60 to 100 every week, wednesdays was horse killing day, they all went to France for human consumption, no stress regards traveling a long distance..they were dead.
 
onymee said:
seriously, apart from the fact that people have paid for beef and got something else, just what is the problem over here with eating horse meat?
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Tesco et al. have pulled a marketing masterstroke over the last decade or so, somehow tricking many of us into thinking cheap doesn't equal nasty. Turns out it was a trick, shame on us. Time we paid a decent price, for decent, local, traceable food - and time for the farmer to get a fair price.

The problem isn't about horse meat per se. All else being equal I'm quite sure horse is every bit as lovely as beef - however all's not equal. This horse is of unknown provenance and almost certainly wasn't meant for human consumption. Someone, somewhere along the line knowing passed this meat off as beef - what other food standards legislation have they also ignored?

The nastiness is the uncertainty, untraceability, and likely connection to organised crime. It turns out this may in fact be donkey.
 
quite clv101 .....This is another indicator that the standards 'punched in steal' in the Victorian times, are long, long, past their 'sale by date.'
We are falling into a past, we thought we had left far behind. Where slavery was accepted, dog ate dog, animals were used and killed, women were, not much better, old people were left to die in their excrement.
 
I think it's very likely it's donkey. Romania exports donkeys by the lorry load for the meat market - my two donkeys were rescued from the Romanian meat market.
 
clv101 said:
Tesco et al. have pulled a marketing masterstroke over the last decade or so, somehow tricking many of us into thinking cheap doesn't equal nasty. Turns out it was a trick, shame on us. Time we paid a decent price, for decent, local, traceable food - and time for the farmer to get a fair price.

The problem isn't about horse meat per se. All else being equal I'm quite sure horse is every bit as lovely as beef - however all's not equal. This horse is of unknown provenance and almost certainly wasn't meant for human consumption. Someone, somewhere along the line knowing passed this meat off as beef - what other food standards legislation have they also ignored?

The nastiness is the uncertainty, untraceability, and likely connection to organised crime. It turns out this may in fact be donkey.
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Very well said. Plus the fact, let us not forget it's the poorer in our society who are eating these 'value' meals.
Haven't come very far from the workhouse have we?
 
I think the taboo with eating horse meat in the british isles stems from worshiping epona the horse god in pre christian times.
 
clv101 said:
Tesco et al. have pulled a marketing masterstroke over the last decade or so, somehow tricking many of us into thinking cheap doesn't equal nasty. Turns out it was a trick, shame on us. Time we paid a decent price, for decent, local, traceable food - and time for the farmer to get a fair price.

The problem isn't about horse meat per se. All else being equal I'm quite sure horse is every bit as lovely as beef - however all's not equal. This horse is of unknown provenance and almost certainly wasn't meant for human consumption. Someone, somewhere along the line knowing passed this meat off as beef - what other food standards legislation have they also ignored?

The nastiness is the uncertainty, untraceability, and likely connection to organised crime. It turns out this may in fact be donkey.
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I agree ... I think part of the problem is that the big supermarkets are very keen on price point marketing ... and put pressures on their suppliers to meet ( not meat !) their required profit margins whilst still maintaining the consumer price points. I can quite understand how suppliers to supermarkets (and possibly other organisations) have. perhaps, unwittingly been offered an opportunity to meet the supermarkets objectives. Horse meat is much cheaper than beef ... pork is much cheaper than beef and substituition of these cheaper alternatives would permit a much cheaper product to be sold throughout the supply chain. What I WANT to know is who was the prime culprit ... where was the substitution made and who knew about it ? I think there's a lot more to run in this issue ...

These products were very much 'budget end' of the market and were sold at very low prices .... there's an old saying "If it looks too good to be true - then it probably isn't !"

Personally, I have no problem eating any meat ... as long as it's what is says it is and I have a good idea about where it has come from and how it was reared.
 
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VEG said:
The problem being, was the horse raised for human consumption. They could have died from disease or be road kill or full of who knows what hormones. Farmers in this country that do it legally have all sorts of forms and restrictions to deal with.
My local butcher is landed this has happened as his trade is well up.
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Horses generally don't up as roadkill and if they did, they'd be turned into pet food just as any fallen stock is. No animal which dies of disease gets into the food chain and horses are not pumped full of hormones either. That's for your factory farmed poultry, Benrad M@thews turkey, KFC, etc.
As a former livestock keeper I can tell you that DEFRA (or whatever they call themselves now)are very strict. I had to keep a medicine book and list every single thing I treated the animals with, from worming, louse treatment, antibiotics etc and could not take any animal for slaughter within a certain time of using them. At the slaughterhouse, a vet is on hand to inspect every single animal before it gets killed and anything showing signs of illness is turned away. Then, after it is killed, the meat gets inspected again before getting stamped. Any horse going into the food chain would have exactly the same. Incidentally, there is nothing wrong with roadkill. A friend brought his 2 daughters up with 90% of their meat being roadkill. If I find a newly killed deer, I too take it home to eat.
Seriously, I find that townies have little or no idea how their meat is produced and little interest either. They go on about hormones in meat, yet blithely eat el cheapo frozen chicken and turkey from the supermarket lol.Us country folk are under no illusions about it, especially smallholders like myself who were self sufficient in meat and even though I no longer grow my own meat, I am super fussy about what I buy and who I buy it from and supermarket is not where I'd dream of buying meat.
 
clv101 said:
Tesco et al. have pulled a marketing masterstroke over the last decade or so, somehow tricking many of us into thinking cheap doesn't equal nasty. Turns out it was a trick, shame on us. Time we paid a decent price, for decent, local, traceable food - and time for the farmer to get a fair price.
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that will never happen sadly as people like to pay next to nothing and eat more than they need.They prefer to remain in ignorance about their food so that they can tell themselves that meat doesn't really come from dead animals.Thanks to the rise of ready meals, many cannot even cook and think there is something wrong with buying a cheap cut and cooking it slowly.And don't mention offal to anyone under 30!
A case in point. I was in Te$co a few years ago, shopping with a friend. Into the trolley I put a pack of te$co finest pork sausages as I'd run out and my butcher is 20 miles away. Anyway, all good ingredients, 65% pork etc. They are actually really tasty too. She puts into the basket, Te$co cheapest and nastiest flourescent pink. I got 6 bangers for my money, she got 12 for half the price of mine. We compared ingredients. Hers had scientific sounding ingredients (always a bad sign) and only 15% meat. She maintained that she couldn't afford the ones I was buying as she needed to eat 5 sausages to fill her up. I pointed out that she wouldn't need to eat as many of mine as they were very filling, the actual meat in hers was snouts and gristle and the high percentage of bread rusk and fat and salt, was what was making her fat with high blood pressure. She wasn't persuaded. People just can't get past the unit cost.

The problem isn't about horse meat per se. All else being equal I'm quite sure horse is every bit as lovely as beef - however all's not equal. This horse is of unknown provenance and almost certainly wasn't meant for human consumption. Someone, somewhere along the line knowing passed this meat off as beef - what other food standards legislation have they also ignored?

The nastiness is the uncertainty, untraceability, and likely connection to organised crime. It turns out this may in fact be donkey.
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Had the horse meat trade been 'normal' in this country, then this fiasco could never have happened.
 
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Luminos said:
I think it's very likely it's donkey. Romania exports donkeys by the lorry load for the meat market - my two donkeys were rescued from the Romanian meat market.
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I'd love to rescue a couple of old Donk's.
 
onymee said:
I'd love to rescue a couple of old Donk's.
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Excuse me...
...they are young donks, 5 year olds now, and I've had them almost 3 years!
(fattening up nicely...)
:D
 
Swarm said:
Very well said. Plus the fact, let us not forget it's the poorer in our society who are eating these 'value' meals.
Haven't come very far from the workhouse have we?
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the general populous has been brainwashed by supermarkets into thinking that they can only afford 'cheap' ready meals when in fact the opposite is true. The reason they did this is to grab the market. People think ready meals and processed food is the cheapest and who sells these thing? Supermarkets of course. Yet in reality, proper food from proper shops is cheaper. A big problem is that schools stopped teaching 'domestic science'. People don't know how to cook. In fact I've long said that I have no idea why new homes are built with kitches since they only need a small space for a fridge, a freezer, a microwave and an electric kettle. I cook occasionally for a friend and her kids. I mentioned one day that I would be doing liver one day. Every one of them turned their noses up and pulled a face. None of them had actually ever eaten liver, they just didn't like the sound of it. I made liver and bacon casserole to my own recipe, mashed spuds and various veg. They cleared their plates. I did a beef casserole one day from beef skirt. None of them had ever heard of skirt because it's not sold in the supermarket. I fed 4 adults and a child a meal plus a pudding (suet sponge pudding made from scratch and cooked in the microwave in minutes) for a total of around £5. Total, not each. I buy meat from a proper butcher (as opposed to a meat seller). He's known for quality, selling only locally reared animals slaughtered in the abattoir behind the shop, he has his own smoke house where he smokes bacon and all the meat is free range. This Xmas I bought the meat for Xmas dinner. I got a flipping huge turkey off a farmer friend. It hung for 2 weeks in the outhouse before I plucked and dressed it. And a massive smoked gammon joint from the butcher. The gammon was actually cheaper per kilo than any supermarket. The butcher's gammon was locally produced free range pork, smoked in their smokehouse. We had roast and mashed potatoes, stuffing stuffed mini squashed (5p each from the local market), broccoli, carrots, sprouts, gravy. We fed 6 adults and there was enough meat left over for the family of 4 to have cold gammon and chips and pickles the next day, turkey stir fry the day after and turkey sandwiches the day after that. Total cost of the Xmas meal was around £40. Cheap food is not processed food and ready meals. Cheap food is good fresh local ingredients from independent sellers and markets. Incidentally if anyone is within striking distance of a small village near Kings Lynn called Gayton, pop in to the butchers called Howards and see why I rave about them.Plus they sell tripe and I'm very partial to a plate of tripe and onions. :)

I find that the people who say that poor quality processed food is all that poor people can afford, are the ones who never bother to make sure of the alternatives and can't be bothered to cook.
 
Luminos said:
Excuse me...
...they are young donks, 5 year olds now, and I've had them almost 3 years!
(fattening up nicely...)
:D
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'old' is just local vernacular. A male child is a 'little old boy', a man is an 'old boy'. A small dog is a 'little old dog', I am an 'old gal'. It has nothing to do wit5h actual age lol.
 
onymee said:
Had the horse meat trade been 'normal' in this country, then this fiasco could never have happened.
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Yes it would have - they would have found something else to put in that was cheaper and probably nastier instead (dog, cat? - i'm sure the RSPCA would jump at the chance to make some easy cash to fuel their hate crusades).

Had a long discussion about this the other day (farming stock, hunters not one vegetarian amongst us :D) Agreed there is nothing wrong with horsemeat.
But in this country the horse has not been considered food for a long time we have had a long history of the horse as a sturdy and faithful companion etc etc. (as an aside do you know it's illegal to slaughter a horse in the USA unless for welfare reasons) although my grandfather told me that a mobile horse butcher used to call in the valley back in the 20's 30's. So dobbin is akin to being a sacred animal.
So firstly people are up in arms because some unscrupulous people have been popping the odd geegee into the shepherd's (or should that be cowboys) pie. QUITE RIGHTLY SO.
Our (the group of hearty sons of the land) biggest gripe was the fact it was misdescribed - If I ask for a pound of Welsh beef mince I want a pound of Welsh beef mince - not bulked up with bits of horse, duck, pig, sheep or chicken (the last four I enjoy on a regular basis BTW) or even granny. If people want to eat horse it's fine by me.
Secondly people are up in arms because the food was misdescribed. I'm sure the little madams in the local pony club would be distraught if they found out their barbecue 'Beef'burgers contained horse.
QUITE RIGHTLY SO.
But it's not just beef/horse is it. Some (no, a lot) of people don't eat certain meats for religious reasons It's their choice and it's very important to them is it right that they could have eaten some 'forbidden' meat unbeknownst to them. Some of the stricter followers of religious diets may think they risk of eternal damnation after eating forbidden food unintentionally - is that right NO IT IS NOT

The moral of this whole story is don't buy all this regurgicrap extra basic rubbish from places like Tesco, Asda et al.
Go there for your tins of baked beans if you must. But for meat go to your local family butchers (not the el cheapo chain places that sell everything in clingfilmed polystyrene trays). It may cost a bit more but you know what you're getting, and if more people use them the prices will creep slowly downwards.
 
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