Horsemeat: two facts, a logical conclusion and a question

[badger]

i'm not a fussy eater and would probably try horse out of curiosity if I saw it on a menu somewhere?  I was at the Melton Mowbray market on tuesday and a couple of stalls had kangaroo, ostrich burgers etc and no one was jumping up and down and stoning the stall owners!  What I cant comprehend is how horse meat is cheaper than beef? are there horse farms where they are bred like cows for their meat?
badger [my name not a type of burger  ]

[stevierst]

Yep, there are horsemeat farms in Europe, just like there are dog farms that breed them for meat somewhere in China or somewhere like that.

Sent from my HTC One X using Tapatalk 2

[Looney tune]

So if some of you were left with only horse meat to survive on you would starve to death ? Bollocks.

[fazed]

Would it bother me to eat horse meat no - like others I have had it before & it was fine. 
What I don't like is being lied to and possibly having horse that was not suitable for human consumption or destined as petfood & paying beef price for it!  No one should put up with being ripped off and lied to by suppliers who claim quality but sell by lying or negligence and packaging what is probably crap! You wonder whether this horse thing is just the tip of the iceberg!

[BBROWN1664]

The reason horse is cheaper than beef is that horse is generally sold for scrap value rather than the cost it took to produce.

[Lawrence]

Horse meat is generally better quality than beef,

Only if it's horse that's meant for eating.  Scabby old Romanian Dobbin probably won't be as good as a nice cow

[Chillum]

What annoys me the most is that people aren't jumping up and down about the man-made shite in processed food. Horsemeat is at least edible for foc's sake.

[Grahamm]

Granted you get a bit more leather from a cow, but you can make it from Goats, lambs, sharks, kangaroos, ostriches, snakes and crocodiles to name a few.

You can also make it from dogs' skin.

Dog skin leather is used in the printing trade for inking up printing plates because it doesn't contain pores, so transfers the ink evenly without blotting.

Any dog lovers here...?

[slimwilly]

Horse meat comes from the abbatoir at 80p per kilo , you do the maths

[DryRob]

[quote author=Buzz link=topic=6334.msg58318#msg58318 date=1360939057]
Granted you get a bit more leather from a cow, but you can make it from Goats, lambs, sharks, kangaroos, ostriches, snakes and crocodiles to name a few.

You can also make it from dogs' skin.

Dog skin leather is used in the printing trade for inking up printing plates because it doesn't contain pores, so transfers the ink evenly without blotting.

Any dog lovers here...?
[/quote]

i thought they used silicone pads now cos its more consistent than a natural product?

[dr bong]

What do you say when you're hungry?
"I could eat a scabby horse............"
Well?  :lol

[VNA]

I've eaten horse meat, but then it was sold to me as horse meat.

If I buy beef, well I want beef.

Mince was invented as a way of selling less desirable cuts of meat or left overs, a good way of getting rid of what otherwise can't be sold. 

The food industry has, like the banking industry, been deregulated and much of it left to light touch self regulation.  And with meat passing through numerous dealers and traders before it is eventually sold as food, well there's plenty of opportunities to play with it and bulk it up and traceability is zilch.

Basically mixing horse meat with beef and selling it as beef is fraud, or as we are finding out actually selling horse as beef, it's fraud.  It's criminal.  Horse is cheap, beef expensive - go figure as they say.

The big worry is, well if horse has been sold as beef for some time, and we've been eating it and have had no idea, well what else do we not know?

And never mind that horse is being sold as beef, but we now know that horse designated as unfit for human consumption - not to enter the food chain - has done just that.

The other factor is the tightened regulations on what is commonly referred to as 'mechanically recovered meat', the pressure and chemical processes use to get scraps of meat and tissue of carcass bones that the butchers knife could never manage.  With tighter restrictions on how this is carried out, well a gap in the market has been created, combine that with dominant supermarkets that dictate the price that producers are paid, well with no regulation this crises was inevitable.

Where are all these horses coming from?  Some have suggested that many are ending up in slaughter houses due to the recession, pets and status symbols that can no longer be afforded.  Ten of thousands of em.  And apparently there's loads available in Romania due to changes in traffic regulations, effectively driving horse and carts off the road.

I know what I'm doing.  I'm eating less meat, and what I do eat is the best stuff, I know what it is and exactly where to comes from and it ain't purchased in the supermarket, and as a result I enjoy it even more and I'm that wee bit healthier too. 

[jon]

I definitely won't be eating less meat, I always try to eat as much meat as possible, but I eat 'clean' (grilled chicken breast, steamed fish, beef steaks etc with rice, fresh fruit and veg). I tend to steer clear of crap, nothing processed, no bread, cakes etc.

To suggest that people dont know whats in theit ready meals instead of beef is just not true at all, everyone knows whats in there,they just choose not to think about it because ready meals are cheap and taste ok. The information has been out there for ages, just search google, youtube etc etc "what goes in a mcnugget". If people want to fill their bodies with shite then its their choice, but there is no way on earth that they can claim they never knew!