In any case, yesterday we discovered that Swedish ready meal company Findus "beef" lasagne products were found to contain up to 100% horse meat. Cue loads of fabulously awful horse jokes on Twitter, but also real concern and upset about the whole issue.
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| A Trakehner: magnificent East Prussian warm-blood |
Trust and Labelling
Mainly, the upset is expressed as anger at having been misled. We cannot trust food labelling and there are questions about whether processed food manufacturers even know themselves what is in their products. This is, of course, absolutely valid.
It has shone a spotlight on the fact that when you're buying a beefburger, it doesn't contain the meat from an individual animal, slaughtered, and made into a nice patty. Instead it is full of bits and pieces of different animals (and clearly different types of animals), processed beyond recognition. Look at this passage from the Guardian. That's what's legally going in your beefburgers and sausages, ladies and gentlemen, labelled as "seasoning".
If the outcome of all of this is an increased understanding that if you want the meat from a single animal in your beefburger, you need to buy mince from your local butcher and make it yourself, great. I'm a little surprised that people are surprised, though.
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| Corned Beef - or Corned Dog - British Army staple |
Apparently Bismarck, well over 100 years ago, said "Laws are like sausages — it is best not to see them being made." We always used to call the German Bratwurst sausages "Schlechteaugenwürste" (roughly: "rotten eye sausages") 25 years ago. My Dad referred to corned beef as "corned dog" from his Army days. These are obviously jokes, but we knew that the notion came from somewhere. People surely don't think that supermarket sausages are 100% meat? They're packed full of all kinds of stuff, and the actual meat (as low as 47% of the content in so-called value burgers) which is in there... well.
Here's Giles Coren, who is absolutely correct in my opinion:
Health Concerns
Let's also be clear, the Food Standards Agency has said there is no health risk involved with the horse meat. How they know that so quickly is anyone's guess, but they're scientists and I'm not. However, they have said this so far. I can understand people being outraged if something is labelled "nut free" when it's not, or "vegetarian" when it's not, or "kosher" when it's not. There are actual health, ethical and religious concerns involved. Here this huge issue is apparently because a different animal has found its way into an animal product.
The trail seems to lead to Polish suppliers. They may or may not have slaughtered horses in accordance with EU standards (horse meat, is of course, eaten across the continent). Equally beef supplies from Poland may or may not have been subject to the same level of health standards, but people aren't horribly alarmed by the chance they're not. Tesco Value Chicken is imported from Thailand: aren't people worried by the potential of poor standards there? I've no more reason to trust them than to trust that an EU abattoir in Poland did not slaughter these horses in the correct manner.
The Horse in the Room
No, my impression is that it's specifically the horse element that seems to have upset most people, whether they express it or not. If these were (non-halal/kosher) beef burgers that were found to have contained 60% or even 100% pork, would everyone really be so agitated? You can of course claim that you want to know what's in your food, and you'd be correct. I'm just questioning whether every newspaper would be full of this right now.
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| "Fine Horse Meat: to barbecue" (Switzerland) |
Remarkably few people I've seen have mentioned "the horse in the room" and that they're actually disgusted at the idea of eating them. A few have, and it's very honest. It also still strikes me as odd, though. Of course you're entitled to eat whatever you wish, but why the distinction? Pigs are more intelligent than dogs. I'd say a lamb, or a calf, is far cuter personally. Of course horses have been domesticated to a large extent, so humanity has a kind of bond with them. I do wonder how many of us (outside Surrey) have close relationships to a particular one that we know though. I can get the idea of eating a dog or a cat because so many of us have them as pets... but horses?
I've been told that it's not in our culture to eat horses: it's an animal that we once worshipped. Well we certainly don't worship them now and does anyone really believe that as an argument? Ancient people worshipped all sorts of random things, including circles of stones, but things move on. It's also the case that the ancient Gauls worshipped horses, but are happy enough to eat them in France today.
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| Horse Steak |
Lots of People Eat Horses
In fact, LOTS of people eat horses. According to Wikipedia, 4.7 million horses are eaten a year in the world. They are a delicacy in France, Germany and Scandinavia and are often sold in upmarket "boutique" horse butchers. According to my Oslo Twitter friend @Lise_79, in Norway, when food is labeled 'dyrekjøtt' (cattle, or 'large farm animal'), it can mean beef and/or horse.
I found a whole range of horse recipes this morning on German websites. My favourite was "Pferdefleischwurstsalat" (Horse Meat Sausage Salad) - but mainly because I love the length and construction of German words. Here's a link to a lovely old Horse Butcher's shop in wealthy, civilised Dortmund. Note the picture: yes it's BLACK BEAUTY. The site is actually labelled "Thoroughbred Horse Slaughter Place" if you translate it literally. My impression is that the Germans are much less squeamish and a lot more honest than Brits, at least nowadays, in this regard.
Perhaps the biggest surprise? Horses were eaten in the UK until the 1930s, apparently particularly in Yorkshire. This wasn't a War shortage thing, and it somewhat undermines the "we worshipped them 2000 years ago" explanation for why eating them is so abhorrent to the British.
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| Picture c/o @MrStevenMoore |
I've my own theory on all of this, and I'm sure it's not one that's going to win me too many friends. It's one I think plenty of vegetarians will however identity with. It simply comes down to this: many people really don't like associating any real life animal with what they're eating on the plate. There is a deep seated ability to make absolutely no link between the cute little lambs you'll see this month bouncing round fields, with the meat you eat on Sunday. Your sausages aren't the ones that were in any way associated with the brutal sow stalls and stomach turning cruelty of the factory farming industry... etc, etc. We've got that sorted in our heads with regards to cows, pigs and sheep. We don't have it sorted when it comes to horses. This is new, and it's challenging.
What this scandal has done is throw up perfectly valid concerns about labelling, provenance, the way in which the ready-food industry operates. However, beyond that, it has made a very concrete link in lots of people's minds back to actual animals that they eat. Many people just don't, as a rule, like to think eating what was once a living, breathing being, about where they've come from, or about supporting an industry that many would find sickening beyond belief, if they ever dared to explore it.
Put bluntly, many people are in denial about eating meat in general, and this is reflected in their reactions to this horse meat story. My friend @TheMrsFong puts it perfectly here, and in her typically gentle and thoughtful way. Read from the bottom tweet up:
There we go. You may be one of the meat-eaters who is not put off by horse meat, and I have a lot of respect for your position. It has an intellectual honesty about it. If you eat cow or pig, why not? By all accounts it tastes extremely good.
For my part, I can't really see any other explanation, for the reasons set out above, why it is such a massive story that horse meat has been found in processed food. We know processed food is dodgy, we know there's no confirmed health risk, and we know that we don't actually worship horses. We also know that the newspapers wouldn't be full of these stories, if it had been pork, rather than horse, that was found in a product labelled "beef lasagne".
This story has unsettled many people and filled them with revulsion. I genuinely think many won't consciously realise why. If they eat meat anyway, I just cannot see why they are so upset, other than it has made them think for a moment about the meat industry in general. I'm just guessing plenty have found they don't actually like thinking about that much at all.
