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I can’t quite believe how much horse has been shovelled into our daily diets — I didn’t realise they farmed and culled horses in such vast quantities — but yet more horsemeat ‘Italian’ meals have been found. Tesco’s discovered its ‘Everyday Value’ beef spaghetti bolognese was, in fact, at least 60 per cent horse.
Again, Comigel is the culprit, the French food producer behind the Findus ‘beef’ lasagneigh and Tesco’s horse burgers, which has lead Tesco to strike it off its supplier list. The Food Standard Agency is pushing tough new tests to scrutinise food to make sure it’s actually what it says on the tin. That includes food supplied to schools, hospitals, prisons and the military, because if you thought they got anything other than value products, you’re off your rocker.
It’s probably a good thing that all this has come out, because it means we’ll have a more rigorous guarantee that the unidentifiable meat you’re chowing down on is actually what it’s meant to be, and not rat, horse or something else entirely alien. All this Comigel stuff could be so much worse of course — imagine if they’d found human DNA in Tesco value beef burgers. [Independent]
Image credit: Horse from Shutterstock
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I guess the old saying “I’m so hungry, I could eat a horse” is even more relevant (and easier to accomplish) these days.
True dat.
What really infuriates me is that I’ve had all these amazing horse recipes for years and I’ve had to butcher my own out of necessity. If I’d known, I would’ve saved a lot of late nights/early mornings.
On the plus side, next time you want to ‘send someone a message’ – just leave a Tesco Value Bolognese in their bed….
Hha ahhahaha, brilliant. Findus lasagne is the new horse’s head in a bed.
Well from what I read on t’internet, people swallow up to 8 horses a year while they are fast asleep and they don’t complain about THAT.
As long as it’s not dog, rat, pigeon, baboon, tarantula or Katie Price – I really don’t care.
Horse meat can’t be all that bad, we’ve been eating it for long enough.
Horse meat is delicious.
Personally I only care about it not being dog
(although I’m not sure where that leaves Katie)
Yeah. Too much silicone in a Katie
Apparently it’s because of a painkiller that despite being banned for 20 years is still used a bit and is quite unpleasant for humans
Pigeon is very nice! I were brought up on rabbit and pigeon pie! Times were hard up north ya know..
it’s funny as people eat horses pretty regularly, people even pay more for it, as it’s like beef but has more protein, generally healthier
just as long as the horse was killed humanely, and it doesn’t make horse numbers deplete, i’m fine with it
The very fact that horsemeat is generally more expensive than beef, yet they still use it instead of beef to make more profit margin, is the concerning part. It implies that they used some seriously “sub-prime” parts of the horse.
The current though it that criminals were buying dead horses from vets and selling them on. So it could be that the horse has bad chemicals in it.
I read somewhere that Romania has recently passed a law that bans horses from travelling on public roads, so Romanians have been selling them on for scrap.
Shocker as you get what you pay for in “Value” products. Apart from New Zealand Lamb, I only buy British meat (whether it is a joint on its own or part of a Waitrose/M&S ready meal).
Hmmm, you probably don’t want to know what we put in our sheep, but in case you’re wondering, ask the Welsh
It’s not necessarily about where the meat comes from. This is a problem with processed meat – cheap processed meat at that, much of which comes from the continent. Beef steaks are still just that, regardless of where they’re from, but I’d be wary of any value meal that contains minced meat.
Horse is perfectly fine. If you’re getting all up in arms about this, make sure it’s about being deceived. Not about getting a totally fine type of meat. Or is it because horses are oh so cute and adorable?
Exactly the consensus of a conversation had in the pub last Friday.
‘It’s Probably Safe to Assume that Everything “Value” and Produced in France is, In Fact, Horse.’
But it’s even more dangerous to use lazy stereotypes…..
And there’s none lazier than the French….
Mexicans and Greeks?
The British?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2276418/Lazy-Britain-uncovered-How-FOUR-MILLION-adults-worked-lives.html?ito=feeds-newsxml#axzz2JgYB758T
I’m sorry, but you can’t use anything printed in the Daily Mail as a reference…
It was also in The Sun so I wasn’t sure which paper had more credibility!
It’s safe to assume that processed meat is going to be anything other than beef. What percentage is road kill (badger, rat, cat, dog, fox, etc) or disposed of zoo and circus animals?
I noticed that its probably more likely to be donkey than horse, as donkey meat is far cheaper than horse.
Back in the late 80s, I worked for a company that made products for superstores and when they were making sweet pickle for Tesco, the quality control department walked out in disgust.
The new recipe for Tescos value burgers has leaked onto the internet….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIyixC9NsLI
I’m just shocked at the amount of perfectly edible food going to waste as the supermarkets remove these products from the shelves. Surely they should just scribble out “Beef” and replace with “Horse” using a marker pen. Maybe add some small print along the lines of “May contain traces of veterinary drugs, consume at own risk”. They’d sell out in days.
Small print would offer no protection the the supermarkets.
People poor enough to actually buy the Value range deserve to eat Horse.
Trololololololo
They’re just trying to get it authentic:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horse_meat#Italy
Love the picture
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