Two posts in one day. Very bad practice.
I've been following coverage of the appearance of horsemeat in "beef" meals with some interest. The story started with horsemeat appearing in processed burgers, and has now developed to include lasagne, pasta sauce and school cottage pie.
Several things strike me:
1 - the complexity of the chain that links the meat with the finished product. A company in France uses a factory in Luxembourg to make meals for sale in the UK (and elsewhere), using meat from Romania supplied by a company in the Netherlands. Or something like that.
2 - How long has this been going on? The appearance of horse in so many products makes me wonder if it has been going on for longer than a month or two, but has only just been found out.
3 - there is of course an issue over eating horse at all, from a British point of view. It's been interesting reading articles in the Dutch press (trying to keep my holiday Dutch going from last year) and the French press (this year's holiday preparation) explaining why eating horse is so problematic for us. But this is not a food safety issue, and it is interesting discovering how many horses are slaughtered for food here nonetheless. The safety issue seems to me to be the appearance of phenylbutazone in food - although the levels are very low.
And I had been wondering about the tinned meat in the store of the foodbank that I volunteer for. And now the Guardian is talking about it as well. Admittedly we have had tins of cassoulet, but we have a lot of tinned stew and chilli. I shall continue to follow the story.
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