Horse labeled as beef ...

[Bruce Wayne]

Mary had a little lamb & when she saw it sicken, she sent it off to packing town & now it's labeled chicken.

 

[LizzieMaine]

If you bought beef off the black market during the war, there was a better than even chance that what you were actually getting came no closer to an actual cow than pulling a milk wagon.

 

[LoveMyHats2]

Not too sure how recent, but, Burger King has had issues with meat NOT coming from a "cow" or beef in their burgers, can we say, "Mr. Ed"???? (Hello, Willllber)!!!! lol!

 

[DJH]

Funny how a while ago we were all excited because a company was shipping products with cow instead of horse and now it's the other way around.

I used to have to work in a lot of meat processing plants, with a few exceptions totally disgusting.

 

[Edward]

Sadly, the popular press here seem to be whipping it up in a "oh noes! we has eaten teh my little ponies!" manner. As the point was made above, from half the reports even on the better broadcasters you'd think that horsemeat was itself the contamination, rather than that the horsemeat, as a non-traditional foodstuff in the UK, might itself be contaminated. That and the labelling problem (which might be more widespread - there are already stories circulating of beef products being sold as all beef when they also contain pork, an obvious problem for those on Halal or Kosher diets.

 

[Foxer55]

cordwanglwe,

The point of the fraud is to make money from selling carcasses not fit for human consumption, whether because of risk of disease or because they're pumped full of bute and other nasties. Whether the animals were attended by a vet - and remember, vets may have provided the bute - is immaterial, as others have said.

Over and over and over - its about the MONEY.

How can we compare this model to circumstances in the Golden Era?

 

[Baron Kurtz]

Well, read Upton Sinclair on slaughterhouses and adulteration. I wouldn't imagine that his pre-Golden Era stories had changed much by the 30s-50s. it was all about the money!

 

[LizzieMaine]

Sinclair's writings led directly to the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, which made such chicanery illegal in the United States. Not to say there still weren't chiselers, but there was at last a book that could be thrown at them if caught. There was also a burgeoning consumers-rights movement that built up in the thirties thru the work of Frederick J. Schlink, the founder of Consumers Union, and consumers began to make it clear that they expected truth in labelling and honest value for their money. Sausages full of sawdust and horsemeat hamburger weren't going to cut it any longer.

 

[Baron Kurtz]

I live by the thought that wherever a chisel is possible, someone's probably doing it, and probably to shave pennies off production costs.

 

[randooch]

I recommend less specificity on dead animal food, like "mammal meat."

 

[esteban68]

As a 'working class' Brit brought up mainly by grandparents who lived through WW2 who ate just about everything from black pudding to whale meat, from donkey to pigs cheek, from wood pigeon to squirrel...if it walks, swims , flys or crawls I think the saying goes!
As a child at their house I ate many of their delicacies one of my favourites was picking meat straight off a pigs head stored in the pantry, they even had a bacon hook at the bottom of the cellar stairs left over from the 50's before ready sliced bacon was commonly available.

It's been a very hot topic for a week or two especially here in rural Derbyshire, most of the men I have spoken too couldn't care less morally if it's cow or horse, the ladies slightly less so but many still wouldn't object to eating horse even three ladies I work with who keep, ride and live/love horses in fact two are pro the UK eating horse meat.....apparently because old and unwanted horses are sent 'abroad' often in appaling conditions ( their words not mine!), when they get abroad they are slaughtered for food.

The problem is complex and several in that we all want cheap food, however we also want to be picky about it, we as a nation due probably to some extent to tv/film/cartoons no longer want to eat 'fluffy' bunnies that remind us of Watership Down, Binkle & Flip et al or Black Beauty, Champion the Wonder horse etc but want chicken, beef, pork and lamb and that must be cleanly wrapped in sterile plastic!

As a youth I often went shooting mainly with air rifles for rabbit and woodpigeon and during the very lean period of the miners strike in the 1980's when getting meat WAS very difficult we ate whatever we shot or that others provided -god knows what it was sometimes but I know several miners who did time for sheep rustling off a local very well known country estate that was when they could get out of the semi blockaded villages they lived in.

The market is fickle and the consumer especially so and many take advantage, years ago I recall seeing an amateur video of fairly local meat producers washing off dye sprayed that had been under inspectors supervision sprayed upon chicken? deemed unfit for human consumption as soon as the inspectors had left the factory!

My and many others only real concern is that the meat we buy is safe for us and our children to eat and that we get what we expect to and pay for!

 

[Nigel]

I have always wondered why some manufactures can offer horse hide jackets at such a low price …

Because a horses hide is worthless. Were I work (knackers yard) we don't even skin horses they are not worth the bother. They just get shipped out to the rendering plants.

 

[esteban68]

I guess it's supply and demand? if we were less squeemish and used horse hide more in the UK then it would have a value........ditto rabbit fur, it constantly amazes me that a fantastic high protein low fat food source has been removed from our diets in just two generations, I believe myxomatosis was 'invented' and introduced to the UK to kill off rabbits rather than let people hunt (poach) them on 'private' land, sadly these animals are still suffering from that disease as we eat adulterated meat and use artificial fur that is often made from oil products that create toxic by products during it's manfacture.

I'd bet good money that if a top UK tv chef or two started doing a few horse dishes then it would'nt be long before we'd see horse in supermarkets as the latest and greatest all singing all dancing (thus expensive) meat!

 

[Nigel]

I guess it's supply and demand? if we were less squeemish and used horse hide more in the UK then it would have a value

Please no, horse hide, when compared to cow hide, is like tissue paper and it's a god awful job to skin them without marking or nicking the hide.

 

[esteban68]

i was always under the impression horse hide was superior to cow?

 

[Baron Kurtz]

After tanning, I believe it has different qualities, but certainly thinner than cowhide. (This gives no indication to superiority or inferiority.)

What Nigel says explains why horsehide is more expensive than cow - more difficult to produce large, flawless pieces.

 

[Mr Badger]

Some really excellent points being made here – as the Baron pointed out, the adulteration of food has a long and ignoble history, even sweets and bread... suffice to say, if you read "Fast Food Nation" or "Swindled: The Dark History of Food Fraud", the recent horse meat scandal is nothing new (like many things under the sun!)...

Personally, I think it's a symptom of modern life that many people are so distanced from the food chain. One person I know, who's just turned 30, didn't even know that pork and bacon came from the same animal! :eeek:

Certainly, folks have been forced to eat less desirable parts of animals / species when pressed (rationing, famines, economic issues) but no matter whether you're talking tripe, chitterlings, chicken feet or fish heads, they're still recognisably related to the animal world... personally, when I was a child in the mid-1970s, most of the meat came from surrounding farms, went to the slaughterhouse in the next village, then came back to the local butcher – if you wanted sausages, that's where you bought 'em, unless you made them yourself – even back then, most folks thought that supermarket sausages had 'sawdust' in 'em! Unfortunately, unless you're a member of the 'chattering classes', this general distrust of manufactured food is no longer the norm, and unless you can afford to buy organic meats and veggies, etc, you're pretty much certain to be eating poor quality food that's stuffed with odd things, from traces of vet drugs to harmful chemicals (not all of which are artificial additives!) and, as we've seen, rogue species!

It's funny that after the industrial revolution hit the food industry, the world wanted to pay a premium for NOT having food that had been touched by hand, whereas nowadays you need to pay more for things that HAVE!

Dunno about in the US, but here in the UK, the rise of grossly overweight people / crappy food as the norm really started when huge frozen food supermarkets first opened across the UK during the early 1980s – there was a massive rise in the sale of chest freezers, and my cash-strapped, hard-working parents certainly appreciated that they could do one big, really good value shop every two weeks, then use the veggies from my dad's garden. Needless to say, the quantity of the food on our plates went up, and I became a real teen porker, after being relatively trim during my childhood, but the nutritional value went waaaaay down. In fact, it got so bad that I became a vegetarian for a number of years!

Mrs Badger and I (and it's me who does the cooking!) really watch what type of food we buy, and try to steer clear (no pun intended!) of too much processed stuff. Happily, compared to the astronomical prices in such US chains as Whole Foods, you can still find local, additive-free, affordable ingredients in the UK, even in regular supermarkets... having been in between jobs for the last two weeks, I've been able to spend proper time shopping for the freshest veggies, best bread, and quality meats, which most folks simply don't have the time to do – I understand that – and we feel a lot better for it, and it's cheaper!

Until folks end up doing simple, cheap, tasty and really traditional things like buying a small free-range chicken for £6 ($9) and using every part of it, as I did last week (roast dinner, two lots of stripped-off pickings that made a pasta dish and a curry, then boiled the carcass for soup and two lots of stock), they're in trouble...

 

[LoveMyHats2]

Sadly, the popular press here seem to be whipping it up in a "oh noes! we has eaten teh my little ponies!" manner. As the point was made above, from half the reports even on the better broadcasters you'd think that horsemeat was itself the contamination, rather than that the horsemeat, as a non-traditional foodstuff in the UK, might itself be contaminated. That and the labelling problem (which might be more widespread - there are already stories circulating of beef products being sold as all beef when they also contain pork, an obvious problem for those on Halal or Kosher diets.

I think that is why I purchase so many Porter House Steaks, hard to make that "cut" of meat even look like the real deal if it is not actually from an animal that goes "moo".....lol!

 

[esteban68]

"Mrs Badger and I (and it's me who does the cooking!) really watch what type of food we buy, and try to steer clear (no pun intended!) of too much processed stuff. Happily, compared to the astronomical prices in such US chains as Whole Foods, you can still find local, additive-free, affordable ingredients in the UK, even in regular supermarkets... having been in between jobs for the last two weeks, I've been able to spend proper time shopping for the freshest veggies, best bread, and quality meats, which most folks simply don't have the time to do – I understand that – and we feel a lot better for it, and it's cheaper!

Until folks end up doing simple, cheap, tasty and really traditional things like buying a small free-range chicken for £6 ($9) and using every part of it, as I did last week (roast dinner, two lots of stripped-off pickings that made a pasta dish and a curry, then boiled the carcass for soup and two lots of stock), they're in trouble... "

ditto Mr B, I do the exact same thing including most of the cooking, the missus does the kidney chopping up as it irritates my hands bizarrely liver nor any other animal bit or piece has the same effect just kidneys!

Whenever I mention doing the leftover food thing in the office you should see the look of genuine horror of most of the ladies in the office at using 'old' food!!!

 

[Mr Badger]

Yeah, Esteban, just simple cookery seems to be a bit beyond a lot of people I know!

Here's what I made for dinner tonite – 100% horse-free beef mince cottage pie with carrots, green lentils & red onion, topped with 'tater & parsnip mash, served with red wine (brown) gravy and pickled red cabbage (leftover from Christmas):

Mrs Badger is having what's left for her lunch tomorrow, and is very happy about it!