Horse meat?

[onymee]

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 ) 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.

not getting into the ethics of chasing a wild animal to the point of collapse with a pack of dogs. But with your comment of meat perhaps costing more from a proper butcher because mostly it doesn't. In any case, people eat far too much meat. It wouldn't kill anyone to buy better and eat less. In fact looking at some of the massive wobbling young women I see with their equally porcine children, in town, it is to be recommended lol

 

[onymee]

Microwave!!

WITCH!​

it's actually very nice, and cooks in minutes. This is important if your friends only have an expensive electric cooker in the house and I don't want to spend an hour steaming the dessert. As to the witch comment. How did you know?

 

[pargyle]

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 ) 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.

Totally totally agree ....

 

[Swarm]

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.

I find some are very hasty to jump to conclusions and assume far too much with very few facts.

I know precisely (because I cook every day) how much it will cost me to buy the ingredients for a lasagne. I also know that a nuclear version is cheaper. Do I make my own? Yes.
What if I was really skint? Maybe not, sadly.

Time to find the outlets for fresh produce, other than supermarket, when juggling silly shifts and a multitude of other stuff can also make a 'one shop get's all' approach sound very tempting. The cost in bus fare or fuel/parking has to be taken into account.
Bring back the High Street, bring back decent produce. It worked long before supermarkets and we were all fairly skint back then.

 

[onymee]

I find some are very hasty to jump to conclusions and assume far too much with very few facts.

I know precisely (because I cook every day) how much it will cost me to buy the ingredients for a lasagne. I also know that a nuclear version is cheaper. Do I make my own? Yes.
What if I was really skint? Maybe not, sadly.

Time to find the outlets for fresh produce, other than supermarket, when juggling silly shifts and a multitude of other stuff can also make a 'one shop get's all' approach sound very tempting. The cost in bus fare or fuel/parking has to be taken into account.
Bring back the High Street, bring back decent produce. It worked long before supermarkets and we were all fairly skint back then.

if you used exactly the meagre amount of meat in your lasagne as the microwave stuff, then you would find it cheaper lol. I tend to make a decent portion of the stuff which is very filling as it has more meat in it (I can eat a whole one of the microwave variety and am hungry half an hour later), but can only manage half the same portion size home made. I make a batch, eat one and freeze 3.Same with spagbol. I am normally very skint and have been so skint that either I ate or my son ate. Couldn't afford for both to eat. I learned from that how to make very little go a long way. I simply could not afford to eat ready meals as they don't fill me up properly so I end up eating biscuits and 'snacks' half an hour later whereas a home made lasagne with salad will keep me full for hours. I have been trying to discover how much actual meat is in the 'meat sauce' listed as an ingredient of ASDA frozen lasange but am unable to. I suspect it is only a tiny percentage.Something like a tablespoon perhaps?

 

[pargyle]

I find some are very hasty to jump to conclusions and assume far too much with very few facts.

I know precisely (because I cook every day) how much it will cost me to buy the ingredients for a lasagne. I also know that a nuclear version is cheaper. Do I make my own? Yes.
What if I was really skint? Maybe not, sadly.

Time to find the outlets for fresh produce, other than supermarket, when juggling silly shifts and a multitude of other stuff can also make a 'one shop get's all' approach sound very tempting. The cost in bus fare or fuel/parking has to be taken into account.
Bring back the High Street, bring back decent produce. It worked long before supermarkets and we were all fairly skint back then.

I very much agree .... we let the supermarkets take over the high street ~ initially the likes of Tesco, Fine Fare (remember them), Sainsbury and a few others. Then Asda started the 'out of town' centre superstores race and before long the supermarkets had all but moved out of the high street and started selling EVERYTHING that sold in volume. Left the high street to become the domain of only very specialised shops with a niche, charity shops, estate agents, phone shops, banks/building societies and a few clothes/shoe shops. Over the last 8/10 years the supermarkets noticed that a few smaller grocers and convenience stores were thriving locally and so what has happened ? Just look at the figures for the growth in Tesco Express and Sainsbury Local stores over the last few years and how they have achieved this growth... talk about retail domination - when will it stop ? Morrisons are looking to open 70 local stores before the end of 2013 - they've just made a start by buying 49 of the failed Blockbuster stores.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sainsbury's_Local

You really have to question how Town Planners have allowed all this to happen .... money talks I'm afraid. It's yet another case of the big players dictating how our planet will look !

 

[VEG]

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.

If all these horses come from legally raised stock with passports and relavent paperwork then why all the fuss?
I know what farmers have to do I keep my bees on a farm where I also help out when needed.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

If all these horses come from legally raised stock with passports and relavent paperwork then why all the fuss?

The fuss is the misdescription, when I buy a pork chop I expect pig not sheep. If it was marketed as Tesco finest horse lasagne, no problem - at least you have the choice then

 

[VEG]

I have no problem eating anything as long as I know what it is.
The question I am asking is where exactly did the horse meat come from can it be traced back like any other meat produced for human consumption, and yes I have knowingly eaten a horse steak.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

I think the UK horsemeat was 'legitimate' but the continent - who knows, they have a different slant on regulations there.

 

[VEG]

But if it was imported and cut up in this country could it then have been passed on as british?

 

[BeeJayBee]

But if it was imported and cut up in this country could it then have been passed on as british?

As far as I know, any food that is processed in this country can put UK as country of origin. Could be wrong though.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

But if it was imported and cut up in this country could it then have been passed on as british?

Yes, once it has been 'processed' i.e. minced - for example 'British' pork sausages can be labelled British even if the pig was raised and slaughtered in Denmark as is often the case with the middle/lower end of the market

 

[mbc]

You really have to question how Town Planners have allowed all this to happen .... money talks I'm afraid. It's yet another case of the big players dictating how our planet will look !

While agreeing about money talking, its actually ( unfortunately)the money in our wallets that does the most talking and the pressures of modern life mean the one stop shop with convenient parking is hard to resist (we've all been there - park, ten minute walk to the butchers, bit of chat and hows the weather, five minutes walk to the bakers, same chat, then greengrocers etc. then ten minute walk back to the car and still pop into tesco's on the way home for batteries ! OR rush into tesco's, quick zip round, scowl at old git who tries to engage you in pointless conversation, and rush home to see if someones responded to your latest nonsense post on the beeforum ! - life's great innit !)
I think the positives to be taken out of the latest scandal is that it will momentarily cause Joe public to think about food quality and hopefully send more the way of the high street, but they'll inevitably mostly slide back to the convenient parking and soul less shop.
To those who have posted about eating less meat but sticking to quality, I couldn't agree more ! My family has endeavoured to only buy quality local meat of known provenance for well over a decade now, it does mean we have many vegetarian meals most weeks, but that only adds to variety and not a little mouth watering anticipation of a nice Sunday roast.

 

[alanf]

If all these horses come from legally raised stock with passports and relavent paperwork then why all the fuss?

Because they don't have paperwork, or it's faked. As the Ulster SPCA found some time ago, horses were being gathered in Ireland and issued with fake paperwork and microchips before being slaughtered for human consumption.

The whole basis of assurance in the meat trade, all food products really, has been constructed over the years by creating paper trails. They are intended to document the known origin and history of all human food stuff and food packaging. The logical but absurd extension of this set of regulations is that you have rulings about not re-using glass jars for honey because they were not intended to be part of a 'closed loop' packaging operation and the paperwork trail ends when you sell the jar.

The problem with horse meat turning up in hospital cottage pie or supermarket lasagne is that it's so obviously not what the paperwork said it was. It proves there is a substantial proportion of the food supply that has false documentation. That makes the entire inspection and traceability principle that underpins food health untenable. Governments have lost credibility that the regulation regime they designed contributes anything to real health and safety because so much of it is easily bypassed. All the food regulations are exposed as a merry-go-round of paperwork that produce no more than an illusion of safety.

 

[madasafish]

Because they don't have paperwork, or it's faked. As the Ulster SPCA found some time ago, horses were being gathered in Ireland and issued with fake paperwork and microchips before being slaughtered for human consumption.

The whole basis of assurance in the meat trade, all food products really, has been constructed over the years by creating paper trails. They are intended to document the known origin and history of all human food stuff and food packaging. The logical but absurd extension of this set of regulations is that you have rulings about not re-using glass jars for honey because they were not intended to be part of a 'closed loop' packaging operation and the paperwork trail ends when you sell the jar.

The problem with horse meat turning up in hospital cottage pie or supermarket lasagne is that it's so obviously not what the paperwork said it was. It proves there is a substantial proportion of the food supply that has false documentation. That makes the entire inspection and traceability principle that underpins food health untenable. Governments have lost credibility that the regulation regime they designed contributes anything to real health and safety because so much of it is easily bypassed. All the food regulations are exposed as a merry-go-round of paperwork that produce no more than an illusion of safety.

Yes agree. Box ticking.

It's partially the EU's insistence on light touch compliance .. and also the fact that the FSA is following its illustrious predecessor in being utterly useless as far as the consumer is concerned...

(The "fast" reporting of problems in horse meat slaughtered in the UK (Bute) was interpreted by the FSA as not days, nor weeks but months..)

 

[pargyle]

(we've all been there - park, ten minute walk to the butchers, bit of chat and hows the weather, five minutes walk to the bakers, same chat, then greengrocers etc. then ten minute walk back to the car and still pop into tesco's on the way home for batteries ! .

Sadly, it is no longer possible in most towns to actually walk down the high street and find these shops ... in villages it's even worse. In our town there is not a greengrocer selling fresh fruit and veg in the town centre, there is no butcher although there is one excellent baker ... but it's on a difficult corner and parking is very congested and yellow lines... so, public car park £1.80 an hour or free one with a 20 minute maximum waiting time that's a 20 minute walk away. As I said, the Town Planners have a lot to answer for .... in my town they have just permitted a huge Tesco right in the centre of town so there is no hope for the High Street.

 

[Hivemaker.]

I agree with mbc that it is the people and there wallets that make the decisions,plus the comments on town parking.

Cannot really see anything wrong with the large stores, most of them started off as just one shop at some point, we have a local butcher with one shop and another with ten shops, maybe the one with ten shops will have a thousand some day,and the other may expand to four shops. Same thing happens with many other businesses, even with big bee appliance suppliers,they started off small
once.

I rekon the internet has a fair bit to do with with the closure of some of the high street shops as well.

 

[onymee]

Yes, once it has been 'processed' i.e. minced - for example 'British' pork sausages can be labelled British even if the pig was raised and slaughtered in Denmark as is often the case with the middle/lower end of the market

if you look at the label there is a little round thing which states EU or UK and a number. only UK bred pigs can have UK on it. Pigs raised in the EU and processed in the UK still have to have EU on the label. The number relates to the slaughterhouse and if you google for it, you can find a list of the actual slaughterhouse.
so, on my pack of Tesco smoked streaky bacon it says UK KM088 EC. That tells me the pigs were UK bred, reared and killed and processed by a slaughterhouse in kirklees.
Here is the document which lists all the abattoirs by number www.food.gov.uk/multimedia/.../meatproductsapprovaleng.xls.IIRC it can also tell you if they use halal methods of killing. All New Zealand lamb is killed halal. This is why I go once a month to Howards of Gayton and buy what I need from him. I don't want halal killed meat.

 

[VEG]

if you look at the label there is a little round thing which states EU or UK and a number. only UK bred pigs can have UK on it. Pigs raised in the EU and processed in the UK still have to have EU on the label. The number relates to the slaughterhouse and if you google for it, you can find a list of the actual slaughterhouse.
so, on my pack of Tesco smoked streaky bacon it says UK KM088 EC. That tells me the pigs were UK bred, reared and killed and processed by a slaughterhouse in kirklees.
Here is the document which lists all the abattoirs by number www.food.gov.uk/multimedia/.../meatproductsapprovaleng.xls.IIRC it can also tell you if they use halal methods of killing. All New Zealand lamb is killed halal. This is why I go once a month to Howards of Gayton and buy what I need from him. I don't want halal killed meat.

It doesnt matter what the things say on the food found with horse meat in them though does it, as they have omitted the main ingredient (horse) so what else are they not telling you about.