Horse and cattle prices

[joan]

There is a scandal in Europe over the substitution of horse for beef in food.

Where is it coming from? Horses are much more expensive than cattle so someone is making a massive loss!

[Jim JKla]

Suggest you look at dead horse prices not live horse prices.

[rurwin]

There was a TV Expose about the meat industry a few years ago. They said at the time that it was seriously compromised with organised crime involvement. Now all of a sudden everyone acts surprised.

Sainsbury's is currently crowing that they are the only supermarket not to be selling horse meat. Personally, if horse meat is that much cheaper, I wish they did sell it. Just so long as they label it correctly, I'll buy it.

And give the lambs another week or two gambling around in the fields too. It's no wonder the meat is so expensive; take a look at the size of a leg of lamb these days and interpolate it up.

And what happened to mutton? It can't be that bad.

[RaTTuS]

^ WHS
I'd eat horse it's much leaner than beef
mutton is excellent when you can get it [5YO even better]
but to answer the OP's question
dead horse is not the same as a racing horse or a show jumping one horse can be kept quite cheaply...
then again I think most cheep beef is boy calves as they don't have any other value

[jamesh]

^ WHS
I'd eat horse it's much leaner than beef
mutton is excellent when you can get it [5YO even better]
but to answer the OP's question
dead horse is not the same as a racing horse or a show jumping one horse can be kept quite cheaply...
then again I think most cheep beef is boy calves as they don't have any other value

Apparently it's higher in cholesterol. I'd still eat it though! Probably already have in the UK, and sure I've eaten it in France where they are not so squemish about these things

[Jim JKla]

I have had horse and I have had venison and would be hard pushed to tell the difference between either and beef.

These days I would prefer Venison as it's usually from a wild source then Beef because it is reared to be in the food chain with traceability followed by Turkey Duck or Quorn. Turkey and Duck because of an identifiable flavour and Quorn because it's traceability leads all the way back to a culture tank.

Although some horse is bred for the food chain there are horses that have been exposed to antibiotics and other pharmaceuticals not suitable for human consumption.

Key to all of these is that the meat is sourced unprocessed.

Oh yes I am partial to a bacon sandwich and use ham in home made soup.

[rpdom]

I have no objections to eating horse meat, as long as it comes from a verifiable source fit for consumption.

Although one of my favourite meats is rabbit.

[Jim JKla]

I have a problem with rabbit it runs through me faster than it runs through a field.

[TideMan]

And give the lambs another week or two gambling around in the fields too.

Interesting...........
Here in the Antipodes, we gamble on horses and lambs gambol around the fields, then we eat them.
Evidently, you guys eat horses and gamble on lambs.
You northerners are a weird bunch.

[Jim JKla]

Just some of us

[MattHawkinsUK]

I think the issue isn't that horse meat was found in products. It is the fact the history of that meat is unknown. People who sell horse meat as beef clearly don't care about the rules so they won't bother with the other rules that govern food safety. The worrying thing is not horse meat in the food chain its the fact that those horses were probably found at the side of the road full of drugs. Once people are making money doing this they will start picking up anything they find and faking the paper work to match. Cats, dogs, rats.

Unfortunately the supermarket emphasis in recent years has been on price not quality. I guess we all got what we were willing to pay for.

[howdy2k2000]

Squirrel FTW, and usually available just outside your window. Free meat is good.

[rurwin]

@TideMan, Well caught; as an avowed pedant myself, I have no excuse.

@MattHawkinsUK, that's certainly my only issue with it. Of course it begs the question of how much of the beef that actually is beef has similarly unclear origins.

[ukscone]

just wondered. if you use horseradish sauce with beef do you use cowradish sauce with horse?

[jackokring]

Soylent purple is made out of bankers... or maybe it 99% politician.

[bullwinkle]

It is a shame to distroy food especiall when people in the world are dying from starvation.

point about ...."antibiotics and other pharmaceuticals not suitable for human consumption". is valid though.

[rurwin]

I wonder about that too. There's only one drug that they all go on about, bute. You'd think if there was a problem with horse drugs getting into the human food-chain, then they would enjoy giving out vast swathes of lists with all the gruesome side-effects. Bute has been used to treat humans relatively recently, and is still used in the UK in certain very rare circumstances. You would need to eat impossible quantities of horse-meat to get even a single therapeutic dose. It's been called carcinogenic, but the WHO says it probably isn't, so it certainly wont be at the sorts of exposure levels we are likely to experience. Only 1 in 30,000 suffer serious side-effects, which is why it is not used, but that is at therapeutic dose levels in a sustained course of treatment. If there was any drug worth getting worried about, we would not have heard of bute.

IIUC even bute has not been found in any meat products.

(I'm not a doctor )

[Jim JKla]

It's true that it is more a case of fraud than any serious health risk.

I know that vetenary bills in the UK have increased because EU Vets are no longer allowed to use human certified antibiotics on animals in case levels move up the food chain to produce antibiotic resistant strains of human diseases.

This now means that pet animals like cats and dogs have to be treated with vetinary specific antibiotics.

Not that I am about to eat Cat or Dog if you are so inclined to Swet and Sour Labrador is safe.

While the same may be true for the horse thats ended up in some of these processed foods it only applies to antibiotics perscribed to animals within the EU.

If you truly want to know whats in your meat the only safe method is raise, slaughter, butcher and cook the beast yourself.

[LemmeFatale]

Once people are making money doing this they will start picking up anything they find and faking the paper work to match. Cats, dogs, rats.

Going on footage shown on the news in the last week or so, the laboratories that are testing the suspect meat for horse DNA are also checking for goat and donkey DNA, too.

[joan]

Once people are making money doing this they will start picking up anything they find and faking the paper work to match. Cats, dogs, rats.

Going on footage shown on the news in the last week or so, the laboratories that are testing the suspect meat for horse DNA are also checking for goat and donkey DNA, too.

Might save a lot of time all round if they just test for beef DNA!

[redhawk]

I don't care what I eat as long as it's not got dog, cat or long pig in my take away / ready meals.

Richard S.

[rurwin]

The first supermarket that admits to selling dog or cat is going out of business.

Fortunately, although there are urban legends about ethnic restaurants doing it, I don't believe it would be worth doing on a large scale. There's not enough meat around, you can't farm it, and the chances of being found out are huge.

But I agree; if the people who are passing off horse could make a profit passing off dog and cat, they would be doing it.

[aTao]

I wonder about that too. There's only one drug that they all go on about, bute. You'd think if there was a problem with horse drugs getting into the human food-chain, then they would enjoy giving out vast swathes of lists with all the gruesome side-effects. Bute has been used to treat humans relatively recently, and is still used in the UK in certain very rare circumstances. You would need to eat impossible quantities of horse-meat to get even a single therapeutic dose. It's been called carcinogenic, but the WHO says it probably isn't, so it certainly wont be at the sorts of exposure levels we are likely to experience. Only 1 in 30,000 suffer serious side-effects, which is why it is not used, but that is at therapeutic dose levels in a sustained course of treatment. If there was any drug worth getting worried about, we would not have heard of bute.

IIUC even bute has not been found in any meat products.

(I'm not a doctor )

It just that the press havent thought of anything else. There are plenty of drugs used on horses which, if were used on meat animals, would be notifiable and incur a drying out period.

[aTao]

Also this is nothing new, not by a long chalk. Horse meat was sold as beef during WW2.

Perhaps what should be of concern is not this fraud, that has been discovered and dealt with, but what else is going on. Products are not tested for purity, they are tested for known impurities, leaving a vast swathe of loop hole for crooks.

If horse is sold as beef then you can bet your bottom dollar that kid is sold as lamb (there is officially zero value to a male kid and, like male dairy calves are killed and disposed of at birth)