Meat - a natural product?

Low in fat, high in Shergar

Investigations are under way to try to find out how beef burgers on sale in UK and Irish Republic supermarkets became contaminated with horsemeat. Irish food safety officials, who carried out tests two months ago, said the products had been stocked by a number of chains, including Tesco and Iceland stores in the UK. They said there was no human health risk and the burgers had been removed.

Tesco said it was "working... to ensure it does not happen again". The Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI) said the meat had come from two processing plants in the Irish Republic - Liffey Meats and Silvercrest Foods - and the Dalepak Hambleton plant in Yorkshire.

Horsemeat accounted for approximately 29% of the meat content in one sample from Tesco, which had two frozen beef burger products sold in both the UK and Ireland contaminated with horse DNA. For some religious groups, or people who abstain from eating pig meat, the presence of traces of pig DNA is unacceptable” In addition, 31 beef meal products, including cottage pie, beef curry pie and lasagne, were analysed, of which 21 tested positive for pig DNA.

FSAI chief executive, Professor Alan Reilly, said there was "a plausible explanation for the presence of pig DNA in these products, due to the fact that meat from different animals is processed in the same meat plants". But he added: "There is no clear explanation at this time for the presence of horse DNA in products emanating from meat plants that do not use horsemeat in their production process. In Ireland, it is not in our culture to eat horsemeat and, therefore, we do not expect to find it in a burger. Likewise, for some religious groups, or people who abstain from eating pig meat, the presence of traces of pig DNA is unacceptable."

Just to clarify a "beef" burger which is 29% horsemeat has not been "contaminated" it has been very deliberately and dishonestly adulterated. This scandal was exposed by the Food Standard Authority in Ireland and Tesco etc.; have NO idea how long it has been happening? What were the UK authorities doing as some of the products were "manufactured" here with horsemeat imported from the Netherlands and Spain?

What then for the much vaunted traceability of meat products back to source which was to protect us from BSE, surely one of the greatest unpunished public health scandals in Britain where over 60 people were killed in the most horrible way possible by the food industry? This has been swept under the carpet with no effective accountability for what was in reality murder by the food industry to facilitate their greed by feeding animal matter to herbivores.

I am not a veggie but a good friend became a vegan after working in a Butcher Shop when young and realising that the meat we eat is not a very natural product and the meat industry is not a very ethical industry. I have never though him wrong on this. Who knows what else goes into what Jamie Oliver has dubbed "scrotum burgers?"

The closer to the earth and our locality we stay in the food chain the better for all of us. That after all is the way we have evolved as a species?

Dobbin Steak tonight?