Right now in fair-trade, environmentally aware cafes located in the bohemian yet affordable parts of Britain (i.e. Dalston), vegans and vegetarians are looking at one another over their breakfasts of tofu and lentils with smug smiles, nodding and saying 'I told you so'. (Their glow of righteousness still not powerful enough to offset their pallid complexions, thanks to chronic anaemia.)
Yes, meat eaters of Britain, if you chose to eat budget mince in a packet meal over the last few years, there's a good chance you have ingested horse. And probably not quality horse; more likely exhausted, old Romanian road-kill horse sprinkled with bute, a potentially toxic equine medicine.
I admit that conceding a point to vegetarians hurts like stubbing your toe on the bathroom radiator. To any vegetarians who are offended, I understand not eating animals with faces e.g. cows, pigs and Piers Morgan. That makes some sort of sense. No one has satisfactorily explained to me why mussels or clams are off limits (unless you are militant about the plant/animal classification divide). Seriously, a mussel has rights? Oysters have feelings do they? What about the microscopic organisms that crawl all over your body and you senselessly slaughter every day with detergent...I digress. This blog is not the place to discuss the rights of whelks; back to ground up horsies.
Each day the scandal grows, spreading from Romania to abbatoirs in Wales that store carcasses in skips. The usual nonsense will be trotted out (excuse bad horse pun): more regulation, more government oversight or blaming the EU. There may be some truth in all of this. Yet hearing the food industry bleat that it is the government's fault for not forcing them to check their own products reminds me of the bankers squealing that they cannot be responsible for cheating their customers or mis-selling junk products. It was all the government's fault for not passing laws to stop them.
What a strange concept of business it is where Tesco, Findus and Waitrose need the threat of legal sanctions to test their own meat products from time to time, you know, just to check that the beef mince is actually beef mince. Their managers should have watched more urban narco dramas like The Wire. When buying products that can be easily adulterated, always check the purity first. Any Baltimore street dealer could have schooled them right.
In every crisis, politicians, commentators and lobbyists always insist that we must learn lessons. Usually we do. Unfortunately nine times out of ten, the lesson is the same: more laws, more regulation, more oversight. Maybe that's the answer or maybe the government has enough to do and spends enough of our income as it is. Let's say we introduce these stringent rules making it clear that when you label a product 'beef lasagne' it must be 100% beef, rather than lucky dip meat; it will not change the fundamentals of the food industry or British eating habits.
The unpalatable truth is that British consumers expect to pay rock-bottom prices for processed foods which they can slap in the microwave or oven, whilst watching TV. The fact that they all taste worse than the most basic home-cooked meal and cost per portion at least twice the price is no deterrent. Apparently we are all too busy on our iPads, X-boxes and PDAs to venture into the kitchen to do any actual cooking. So let's all unite in our shock and outrage at the evil food industry, whilst expecting that meat should be as cheap as vegetables.
You do get what you pay for in this world. And if you pay next to nothing, expect to eat such delights as de-sinewed flesh and random animals.
