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.
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.