Andrew Kay: One man’s meat
When oh when is someone going to put an end to all this nonsense about horse meat? Surely for rational omnivores the argument is about being lied to, and of course who it is that’s lying. Horse meat is surely no different for us meat eaters to the devouring of a chicken, a pig, a cow, a duck… Yes, I’ll stop there because I don’t want to engage in the debate about eating dog, although if push came to shove I’m sure if hungry enough many of us would.
Horse is on the menu across much of Europe and I have on many occasions eaten it and can confirm that it can be delicious, tasty and with an interestingly long grain to the muscle that adds texture. How many of you have stopped reading?
“Dare I use the phrase locking the stable door after the horse has bolted?”
The issue is surely not with eating horse but with why? The answers are cloaked in mystery and in, dare I say it, subterfuge.
I have little doubt in my own mind that much of this is due to the pressure put on suppliers by the large food retailers. In an effort to produce fast foods at extraordinarily low prices it was only a matter of time before something had to give. In this case it was Neddy and Dobbin.
Driving down unit costs to such a level that the manufacturers find it necessary to source their produce from, shall we say, less conventional providers, must play a part in this story.
I watched with interest as Delia Smith bemoaned the fact that people no longer cook as she launched her online cookery school. I look on with despair as I see people loading their supermarket baskets and trollies with ready meals and nothing else. Maybe Saint Delia is right, even I succumb to the lure of a ready meal from time to time, although they do tend to be from the also sainted M&S.
Over the years the chains have bullied food suppliers into producing milk at a loss and vegetables and fruit in uniform sizes that leave some producers and their produce laid to waste. There are orchards being ploughed up and farms converting to crops that provide cash rather than food as a consequence. It’s a tragedy and, dare I use the phrase, we may be locking the stable door after the horse has bolted?
In the last few weeks the population have been reported to be voting with their feet and traditional butchers, who can on the whole prove the provenance of the meats that they sell, are saying that business has increased. Paul Williams of Brampton’s butchers in Kemp Town Village has seen an increase of 22 per cent already: “We are seeing new faces, all who say they no longer trust supermarket meat and are amazed that we can show certificates proving where our meat originates, but even then they want to know where the mince and sausages come from and are shocked to learn that we make them at the shop. There is a whole generation who are unaware of how butchers work.”
One can hope that such a swing in popularity will influence the way the big powers operate. By the time they have tested all the meats that they buy and ditched all the products that have been found to contain traces of equine DNA, they will be somewhat out of pocket. It will be a harsh lesson but one they certainly needed to learn.
And trust me, I have little sympathy for the meat suppliers who knowingly introduced horse meat into our food chain. I hope they all get fined and locked up and whilst locked up made to eat a diet of oats, they certainly don’t deserve meat of any kind and especially not horse.
I ate horse meat stew as recently as last October whilst in Maastricht. It was a Belgian restaurant and it was a very traditional sour stew served with fabulous frites – and I loved it. I felt no guilt. It doesn’t seem much different to me than riding horses and certainly less so than making them pull carriages, jump fences and race across tracks interspersed with sometimes deadly jumps.
Our crazy habit of humanising animals is partly to blame and we do all have the right to decide what we will and will not eat. If we can sell cow, pig, hen, but feel better calling it beef, pork and chicken then that is a crazy British quirk. I would readily vote for a change in the law that allowed the sale of horse meat, properly regulated of course and maybe re-named. Any suggestions for a generic term for horse meat? I suggest Shergar.
