Well, Well, Well. I've long suspected that the meat in the
value section of the supermarkets, the takeaways and fast food restaurants was
a bit, shall we say, iffy? Obviously recent news has proven my concerns to be
well founded. If I'm honest I'm surprised it has taken this long for this to be
exposed after all hasn't it always been a joke that kebab meat for example isn't quite what it seems. We've all heard the rumours of the maggots living in the middle of the elephant’s
leg thing in the front window, the disappearing cats and suspicious looking grey "meat" right?
Perhaps humour is our way of coping or more likely blocking out the truth we probably all knew deep down. When we think were taking a bite out of daisy were actually munching on Red Rum. The problem is we are in danger of losing focus of the real issue. Sure to the some the thought of eating a horse is repugnant but surely its nothing more than speciesist to choose to eat some animals and not others. If I may quote Kryten from red dwarf on the eating of chickens for a moment. "It seemed to me that if humanoids eat chicken then obviously they'd eat their own species; otherwise they'd just be picking on the chicken"
The real issue is that what is going in our food? If they have been using horse meat instead of beef what else could they have been doing? Hopefully the lesson that will be learned from all of this is that we should really be paying more attention to what we are eating. Unfortunately we can't follow food from it's production to our plate but what we can do is shop smarter and demand to know as much information about the origin as possible. Let's face it with the cheaper food products the old adage of you get what you pay for couldn't be more true. Raising cattle costs a lot of money and yet you can get a burger for 99p? Even with the buying power of the big fast food chains something doesn't add up there.
The news has recently been interviewing butchers who have been reporting an upturn in trade especially from young mothers. If true this can only be considered a good thing as long as it sticks and people don't forget and start going back to mass produced fodder. If I was being cynical I'd say it were a plot by the government to get everyone using their local butcher again but I think that's crediting this government with too much intelligence. Mainly this has made us think about things we really already should have been thinking about. Namely where does our food come from and what's in it. Hopefully this will start an upsurge in home cooking using good quality fresh British produce. It would be better for us and better for the animals we eat.
A man can dream.
