Horsemeat

Fine if you can get there and there is one!

Hear, hear.

Well said gracesmum

I have tried to read all the preceding posts as per instructions on another thread and wonder if I have missed the whole MONEY ISSUE?
Fact is, on the whole you get what you pay for and as long as supermarkets are under pressure to undercut each other, they will continue to squeeze their suppliers who in turn will be looking to cut costs wherever they can get away with it possible, And if that means using dodgy meat derivatives from Romania or any other country without proper regulation, it will continue to happen.
We are obsessed with cost in this country - yes I know there are many many people living in real hardship, but so there are in other European countries. Look at the quality of food in France, Germany or anywhere and compare it with the rubbish we are palmed off with. Remember BSE-"mad cow disease"?? Processed food and animals which are herbivores by nature being fed meat by-products. Growing resistance to antbiotics? A-B's fed to animals kept so close together it is the only way to stop disease spreading. Remember Salmonella in eggs? battery hens. As long as we exploit and over exploit livestock in in the interests of cheap food and at the expense of the animals' health and our own, there will be incidents like these.
I would truly rather have a small amount of locally sourced meat from a local butcher or farm shop, and not eat meat for several days of the week, than buy tasteless meat products of dubious origin and even more dubious intensive farming practices.

Tegan There are strict rules about recording any medication given to any animals for slaughter in the UK. Of course if someone can make rules and set up a system, someone else can almost certainly find a way to circumvent them. The quality of the beef used in hamburgers/beef burgers will vary depending on the price. Cheap ones will use poor quality meat but it doesn't necessarily follow that the more expensive ones are much better quality. It's more economical to make your own from minced steak – and they will certainly taste better and have a much nicer texture.

Is that one reason why we export a large number of horses for slaughter overseas? That's a genuine question, I'm wondering if it's a way of getting rid of horses that have been on these drugs.

I'm thinking of cattle as well, wondering about the quality of the meat in general [given that some beefburgers might actually have beef in them!].....

Tegan Horses in the UK have "passports" and all medication, including vaccinations, given to them is supposed to be recorded on the passports.

Would an animal slaughtered for food in this country have to have a medical record saying if and when it was wormed or given antibiotics [or bute or lasix]? If so the meat coming from other countries won't be regulated in this way.

I don't think it matters whether bute is a carcinogen to humans or not or whether traces remain in the meat of a horse that has been treated with it. What does matter is that the meat is not traceable as far as we know and there is a strong indication that this is a sizeable criminal exercise. In which case, we have no way of knowing the state of health of the horses when slaughtered or how the meat was treated afterwards. However, it is a fair bet that more corners were cut besides mixing horse meat with beef or selling it purely as beef. Goodness knows, we've actually seen appalling examples of rat-infested, totally unhygienic meat-processing plants in this country when they were prosecuted. This meat comes from abroad and we have no idea of its ultimate source.

Mr soop is chuckling. Thanks again, Bags...I hooted when I read the list of animals/contents in the farmer's field.

I totally agree with Galen about her assessment of the risk from any drug given to a horse. Some will surely be processed and degraded and excreted from the horses body before it reaches the "market.

I cannot see that this drug would be given to a horse that is not actively being ridden and only then if it might be considered to prolong the animals usefulness. I would doubt if anyone is likely to administer it if they are selling on the animal or sending it off for slaughter, so by the time any animal that has been treated actually reaches the food chain I would doubt if the amounts originally given to the horse would be traceable in the meat.

As Galen says you would probably have to eat one hell of a lot of horse to even get traces of a dose.

It all makes for entertaining outrage for the press to speculate about though.

Bags bit like the sheep and the goats. The only difference in Israel is the direction of the tails, sheep down goats up, I think

Bags thanks for that.

That really appealed to my sense of humour, B! Very funny.

Another complacent non-meat-eater here! In the days when I did cook meat, however, I used to do it all from scratch - including burgers - and if you want to know what you and your family are eating, that's the only way to do it.

Bags

And it's all a short-sighted Tipperary farmer's fault!

The carcinogenic scare is over egged!
The drug they are talking about is butuzolidine which was a very good drug until it was found to carry a slight risk of being carcinogenic.
The amount that would be in any tissue from an animal should not carry a risk unless you consume a whole animal.
I know people say that they're 'so hungry I could eat a horse!' But I think the likelihood of them actually doing so is so small as to be 'remote'

I do hope so, granjura. The crippling cost of feed is at crisis point for some farmers.

Hear hear - in a way- this whole debacle maybe a good thing for our farmers, and for the animals too.

Many local abattoirs were forced to close back in the seventies and eighties thanks to the supermarkets buying processed food from whichever source gave them the most profit - often overseas.

Use your local butcher and buy British Beef!

NellieM me too. So - it's meat...

I suppose at the end of the day, we, the customers, are to blame. How can we expect to buy, for instance, 2 large chickens for a fiver - and expect the husbandry, feed, etc, to be quality? I know quality food is expensive - but much rather have less meat and cook it in such a way as to go further (adding veg and pulses for instance - or keeping the carcass to boil for stock and soup, etc.). So much food is wasted -as it is so cheap people have lost all respect for it. Add half a cupful of lentils to bolognese for instance will give you another 2 helpings, and they want even notice, etc.