I will not make any equine based jokes:- I believe that the
media and twitter have quite exhaustively pursued that course of action. However
I would like to talk about the state of the meat packing and processing industries
in 2013. Since the BSE scandal of the mid 1990s the UK has had the most radical
overhaul of the aforementioned industries in the world. Our meat should be
perfect and flawless. Yet according to the news of the past few weeks
(Burgergate – which involved Tesco, Aldi, Waitrose, Buger King and more) and
the revelation yesterday that Findus frozen lasagnes have contained up to 100%
horse meat, it is patently obvious that the processed meat industry is actually
a shadowy world of borrowed sinews, animal derived filler powder and
mechanically recovered circus animal parts.
“Nothing wrong with a bit of horse, mate. It won’t kill you.
Why does the Anglosphere hate on eating horsemeat. Every other country does.”
The people that say that (of which there are more than a few) have gotten the
wrong end of the stick completely. The labels say “beef”, not “horse”. I personally
don’t mind eating horse. I have eaten it on many an occasion when abroad and
rather liked it. But I would like it to be my decision to buy it, not an
unscrupulous greedy meat packing plant owner. And other people object to it
too. The issue is that the products became tainted in the first place amidst
our robust and second to none regularity system. I use that word ‘tainted’
specifically, as I believe that something that wasn’t intended or suspected to be
in a product is technically a ‘taint’. So apparently all the food companies
have to do is to import dodgy meat from abroad or partially prepare their
products there and the fantastic regulatory system is neatly bypassed. I do
wonder how much of the blame will stick to the UK household names and how much will
fall on the Eastern-European slaughterhouses that reportedly supply us with
crumbling foetid flesh.
Of course, the horses that have reached the end of their
life and are in pain from crippling arthritis get pumped full of the
anti-inflammatory chemical Phenylbutazone (otherwise known as ‘bute’ – I love
how horse medicine has street names). This is possibly a bigger deal if this
has entered the food change as it can be toxic to humans. But who knows that
was in the horses systems?
Clearly there is now a crisis of confidence in the
supermarkets and the wider industry. How do you know your frozen fish-fingers
aren’t tainted with sea horses or those scary deep sea fish that have lanterns
instead of eyebrows? There needs to be a root and branch review of the whole
processed food sector and executives need to go to jail before people will be
convinced that it is safe to eat their cheap processed food again.
The updated version of those "tamper evident" popper things on the top of jars will be a home kitchen worksurface sequencer to check for yourself that you have the correct species. We are nearly there...
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanopore_sequencing
Also, if this can happen for cow/horse, what additional religious carnage would ensue if it were another mix up like animal/pig or halal animal/non-halal animal? I say 'if', but I am confident it occurs all over the show.
Best I could do: http://splendidwillow.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Findus1.jpg
Addendum: Why does searching for the word "halal" using Google crash my Chrome browser tab? Very strange.
That article is most fascinating, Toby. How accurate can it be for a non lab version though? I actually think that a lot of animals are automatically slaughtered in a halal/kosher manner as non-religious people don't mind as long as they don't know and religious people are kept happy.
ReplyDeleteI am not sure about the 'Halal Crashing Bug' you mentioned. Maybe you aren't running the correct Chromslim version?