Horseburgers

[The Original An Gadaí]

Horse DNA found in beef burgers

The Food Safety Authority of Ireland has said that horse DNA has been found in some beef burger products on sale in supermarkets.

In some cases this was trace amounts however...

Horse meat accounted for approximately 29% of the meat content in one sample from Tesco.

As someone who just quit eating meat again on January 1st I find it all amusing. Twitter/facebook are alight with outrage and joke making galore. It seems that the guilty parties are meat product exporters from the continent. I'm curious though what product the Irish processors were purported to have been combining with Irish beef to make these burgers. The downside of all this, is despite having no direct responsibility for the impurity and inaccuracy, Irish farmers will probably suffer, at least in the short term.

It seems like a textbook example for the Fastfood Nation book.

[Rube E. Tewesday]

Wow. I actually don't have any real issue with eating horse meat, but I don't like being lied to.

I'm actually kind of surprised that horse meat is sufficiently cheaper than burger meat to make this worthwhile.

[The Original An Gadaí]

Wow. I actually don't have any real issue with eating horse meat, but I don't like being lied to.

I'm actually kind of surprised that horse meat is sufficiently cheaper than burger meat to make this worthwhile.

Oh me neither but same again, it's the lies wherein the problem lies. France is the only country on continental Europe where I know that horsemeat is common fare which makes me suspect the dodgy meat came from there. But yeah I've pondered that same point Rube, I always thought horse meat was more of a delicacy than any cow product.

[CatInASuit]

Looks like Tesco and Asda in the UK have cleared some shelves of the products. Looks like the maker imported a load of "meat" from the continent to make the burgers and are now trying to work out where it came from.

Apparently the "Beef"burgers alos contained a certain amount of Pig as well.

Should have renamed them as Lucky Dip MeatBurgers.

[The Original An Gadaí]

Of course Shergar jokes aplenty have been in the offing.

[The Original An Gadaí]

This whole thing has snowballed into something immense and quite disturbing. There don't seem to be many vendors of meat products that haven't been selling horse meat fraudulently. And it's all tied into a complex web of contracts and subcontracts across multiple nations.

IKEA Removes Sausages in Horse-Meat Scandal.
Now IKEA withdraws sausages containing horse meat from sale in Britain as Tesco boss admits they still don't know what's in their food.
Frozen burger sales plunge 43% after horsemeat scandal

[Elendil's Heir]

I would have no objection to eating horsemeat, as such, but I strongly favor truth-in-labeling laws. Food producers should tell you what you're actually eating, no more and no less.

[The Original An Gadaí]

I would have no objection to eating horsemeat, as such, but I strongly favor truth-in-labeling laws. Food producers should tell you what you're actually eating, no more and no less.

Oh yeah I agree except some of these nags are likely unsafe. Some seem to have been siphoned off the racing industry and full of unpalatable drugs.

[Rube E. Tewesday]

I had mostly been thinking in terms of race horses myself. I hadn't understood until recently that Romanians still farm with horses, and that Romania is a large source of the meat that's turning up.

[The Original An Gadaí]

I had mostly been thinking in terms of race horses myself. I hadn't understood until recently that Romanians still farm with horses, and that Romania is a large source of the meat that's turning up.

My mind boggled at the international supply chain described on a C4 programme for meat for a British supermarket. British firm contracted French firm that contracted a Polish firm that contracted a firm in the south of France who sourced meat in Italy that was actually finally from Romania. Something like that anyway. My cousin raises cattle and in my naivety I imagined there was one maybe two intermediaries typically between the farmer and the supermarket. That same programme said that as well as Romanian horses that American racehorses had been used as food.

[CatInASuit]

It's still going on. Its amazing the n umber of foods that have suddenly been pulled over this. Chances are high that everyone in the UK has had the possibility of eating horse meat, given the number of frozen ready meals that have been pulled.

[Rube E. Tewesday]

I would assume that a massive number of inspectors are employed throughout the EU making sure that all kinds of Brussels mandates are followed.

How on earth could this happen to this extent?

[CatInASuit]

I would assume that a massive number of inspectors are employed throughout the EU making sure that all kinds of Brussels mandates are followed.

How on earth could this happen to this extent?

...because of the large number of officials and bureaucrats from the EU.

Responsibility for food checking was passed up to the EU a few years ago, from national agencies and they tried to implement Europe wide controls, which just weren't good enough and not capable of coping with any corruption that crept in.

The same horror stories have also been appearing in several of the other European countries.