TOPIC - Hairy HorseMeat

What’s wrong with horsemeat? If horsemeat is no health hazard why with hold them from hospitals? (Yes. I liked all those ‘h’s too even with the whole with hold thing.) So we all love our little equine friends. Memories of My Little Pony, Black Beauty, Princess Anne. (All that show jumping I mean!!) But it isn’t really just about our affection for long legs, a fine rump and a good set of teeth, is it? Is it? Although …………..? I digress.

So if it’s not about the horsemeat then what else can we get all het up about? Well there’s the labelling of course. When you buy a beef casserole you’d expect there would be beef in it wouldn’t you? It’s all about what it says on the tin. We like that. What we don’t like is buying beef and getting horse or goat or cat or any other three-a-penny animals. Apologies to goat and/or cat lovers everywhere.

And then there’s talk of fraud and trades descriptions and lack of control and extended food chains and convenience food and supermarkets squeezing farmers (not in the Biblical sense) and over clever marketing and consumer power and consumers’ expectations and our unwillingness to pay a decent price for a decent product and……….. What a palaver! Everyone to blame and no-one to accept blame. ‘It’s all about the money, money, money’ as the song goes. But heads will roll, (tomato sauce /no mustard), many will be sausage meat and some will be well and truly fried. (Now there’s a few of you out there might just rise to the food allegory challenge. Just type in your food related jokes now and press the Comments button. I look forward to all your comments)

The one good thing to come out of all this horsey scandal is that the local butchers are re-emerging as beacons of integrity. And we consumers are finally starting to vote with our feet. The supermarket shelves are increasingly untouched. The buy-one-get-one-free products have lost their charm. Perhaps from this mist we will see the re-emergence of farmers’ co-ops and local markets. How good would that be? Local produce might start to have a chance. And maybe, just maybe we may all end up a little more aware of what we are eating and, consequently, a lot more healthy. At the end of the day we might thank those fraudulent horse traders for finally shaking up our food industry and restoring accountability and integrity to the food industry.     

Now all that remains to do is to defame those never ripe raspberries those ever bland bananas and those totally tasteless tomatoes……………….. Have I mentioned that my son-in-law rents out private allotments?  Cheap at half the price!