No doubt you are outraged about the horse meat scandal. You have every right to be – criminality, profiteering, potential fraud, all have led to many people eating an animal they would probably prefer to see in the 3.20 at Kempton and possibly also ingesting dangerous veterinary drugs. 
However, I’m going to come at this from another angle and it’s this: it’s your own bloody fault. There you go.
I know, I know; you’re not happy. It’s not your fault is it? It’s the government, the supermarkets, criminals and Goodness knows who else.
But it’s not just them, you see. It’s you.
After a week of this story my patience has finally snapped, and it’s time someone told you a few home truths.
Many of us have been banging on for years about this stuff, trying to make you care about the need for better food labeling, about fairness for farmers, about the need to support local farms to avoid all our food coming from giant, uncaring corporate agri-businesses which churn out cheap product to feed the insatiable appetite of supermarket price-cutting.
We’ve been highlighting the unfairness of UK farmers being forced to meet 73 different regulations to sell to supermarkets which don’t apply to foreign suppliers, and talking about our children growing up with no understanding of food production and, more than all of this, about the way supermarkets have driven down and down and down the cost of meat to the point where people think it’s normal to buy 3lbs of beef (in burgers) for 90p.
And you wouldn’t listen. It was like shouting into a gale.
Through the years of New Labour, when farming and the countryside were demonised, you wouldn’t listen. You cheerfully chose to believe that all farmers were Rolls Royce driving aristocrats, as painted by John Prescott. You had no sympathy. You wanted a chicken for £2 and your Sunday roast for a fiver. Well, you got them didn’t you? And hundreds of farmers went to the wall. And you still didn’t care because Turkey slices were ten for 60p.
And now you’re furious, because it turns out that when you pay peanuts for something it’s actually not very good. Who knew eh?
And before you start, don’t even think about the “it’s all right for the rich who can go to local butcher’s shops but what about the poor?” line. The number of people who can’t afford adequate amounts of food is tiny – tragic and wrong, yes, but tiny. Supermarkets don’t make their billions from them hunting in the “reduced” basket, they make their money from millions of everyday folk filling a weekly trolley. You, in other words.
Until the mid 1990s, Britain was also full of good local abattoirs. They were run by people who knew the local farmers who used them, and the local butchers which sold the meat. They were closed in their hundreds by new health and safety regulations which made it impossible for small abattoirs to compete with giant companies doing the job more cheaply.
We tried to tell you, you didn’t care.
And of course, unlike the previous generation you were “too busy” to actually cook. You were so busy that the idea of making a meal, then making two more out of the left-overs, was like something from Cider With Rosie to you. You bought a meal every night. And so it had to be cheap.
We tried to tell you. You just pointed out that Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall went to Eton and sneered at us.
Cheap rearing abroad. You didn’t care. Cheap slaughtering by machine. You didn’t care. Cheap meat full of crap and off-cuts. You didn’t care. Frozen blocks of meat off-cuts from the abattoir floor being trucked in from Poland to ensure your pack of mince was cheap enough. You didn’t care. In fact you didn’t know, but that’s because you didn’t care.
But we cared. We kept trying to tell you. We launched campaigns, we wrote letters, we raised funds for adverts. Nobody knows what they’re eating anymore, we said. Nobody recognises how hard it is for farmers here to produce quality meat at a price they can sell because of the supermarkets.
And you didn’t care.
Well, now you know you’ve been munching on Dobbin and his various nasty drugs, possibly for years. And now you care.
And yes, you’ve been misled, cheated, lied to. But you must also take some of the responsibility. You didn’t tell supermarkets you wanted quality, you just watched the ads which said “175 products cheaper at Asda this week than Tesco” and went to Asda. You made the market they sold in to, you set their priorities. They gave you what you wanted.
So what will you do now? Now that you care.
How about this…
Rather than just moaning at MPs why not actually think about what you eat, what you buy, where it comes from? Why not visit a farm on an open day? Take the kids, show them where their food comes from. If it’s a good farm, why not try to use your consumer power accordingly to make more farms that way? To make them viable. Why not have a think about how you could make meat go further without spending more, through cooking, and thus be able to buy good, British, assured quality meat? 
If you do that, I’ll stop blaming you, and some good may come of all of this.
The culprits responsible for all this will be found, and no doubt tried and hopefully convicted. With luck new rules will be introduced to make a repeat harder. But the market will find a way – it always does. So long as there is a demand for vast quantities of ultra-cheap meat, people will find a way to supply it. So long as people remain uninterested in where their food comes from and how it’s made, someone will cut corners.
It’s a ravenous beast, the market. Like its customers, as it turns out.
So now that you care I’ll tell you that we’ve been highlighting the plight of dairy farmers this year; explaining how supermarkets are paying such a pittance that they can’t stay in business and milk is increasingly coming in from abroad, where standards are lower. Pleasingly people noticed. Some people. If you weren’t one, perhaps, given events, you might like to now?
And when you’ve done that, take a look at the video in the link below, which details the Countryside Alliance’s hard-fought campaign on country-of-origin food labeling. Whilst you were suggesting the CA was only interested in fox hunting, it was doing this, for you, and now you know why.
SOS Dairy: http://www.fwi.co.uk/articles/29/12/2012/136833/sos-dairy-farmers-end-2012-with-heads-held-high.htm
Food labelling: http://www.countryside-alliance.org/ca/campaigns-food-farming/our-step-towards-victory-on-meat-labelling
Excellent point, excellently written
All good and well written. Like it.
I do not agree with the main sentiment of the blog. Retailers, mainly supermarkets must take the blame. That is where the buck stops. It is they that have persuaded the public to buy cheap food and then they source a lot of their food from countries where the health, welfare and traceability audit standards are far lower than ours.
Re: Horse meat – the hardest thing to digest is that it’s your fault.
‘And now you’re furious, because it turns out that when you pay peanuts for something it’s actually not very good. Who knew eh?
And before you start, don’t even think about the “it’s all right for the rich who can go to local butcher’s shops but what about the poor?” line. The number of people who can’t afford adequate amounts of food is tiny – tragic and wrong, yes, but tiny.’
According to Oxfam, The UK is the world’s six largest economy, yet 1 in 5 of the UK population live below our official poverty line, meaning that they experience life as a daily struggle. In real terms, over 13 million people in the UK do not have enough to live on.
Their budget means they eat budget food. They shop where they can afford to shop, and eat what they can afford to eat. Which means they eat cheapest cuts of meat they can afford to buy. And if they cannot afford to shop at the butchers who are being undercut by the supermarkets, then they shop at the supermarkets.
For me, the horse meat scandal comes down to one thing only;
All customers, regardless of their budget, take it in good faith that the meat on their plate is the meat advertised on the packet / box. And so it follows, that supermarkets take it in good faith that their suppliers are supplying them the meat they said they would supply. Whether it be quality cuts or cheap cuts.
If it says Beef, it should be Beef.
Interesting post, especially since horse meat hasn’t made a big splash in the news here in the US. To answer some of the questions about the number of people who have difficulty affording food, I don’t know what the stats are for the UK, but the UN cites 850 million as the current number of people globally who are “food insecure”–meaning they eat, but not enough and not often enough. They are malnourished, but not starving.
http://www.fao.org/publications/sofi/en/
This matters, because dissatisfaction with life conditions and frustrations with meeting basic needs contribute to general problems with political and ethnic stability and crime.
I’m sorry I seem to have forgotten. Didnt the farmers already give their cattle – and us – BSE with, on exactly the same principle, cheap feed? Whose fault was that I wonder?
The low price paid by supermarkets for the end product led many farmers to look for cheap feed for cattle, to maintain their own living wage. It doesn’t disprove the point of this article, it reinforces it.
Your fault again: price pressure you exerted through supermarkets made us desperate to find any cost savings to stay afloat.
Didn’t you read the article?? the underlying point of all of this is that you, the majority, are cheap skates who don’t care about anything else other than a cheap price and wont pay that little more for local quality, so local producers are forced by supper markets to cut their cost of production or go out of business !! You all make me sick, you so thick you can’t see it!
We did read the badly written article, Hey, that’s capitalism.
That was a scam as well, once surgeons realised they weren’t heating their utensils up properly the problem disappeared. And why do farmers get blamed for buying cheap animal feed, do you realise how much it costs £250 a tonne and its going up due to last summer’s poor harvest and the fact half the wheat crop wasn’t drilled this autumn due to the poor weather. Cattle cake and blend is milled and blended by processors looking to make a margin and they do this by adding whatever conforms to red tractor rules so in all honesty once again the farmer has little control and continues to get the blame. Personally i think we have a larger problem here , its a cultural thing, there’s such a massive knowledge gap between farmers and town folk, and the only way to bridge it is to invite you lot to open days like open farm Sunday.
BSE was a result of feed companies cutting corners the said companies DID NOT TELL FARMERS what they were putting in there feeds it took a change in the law befor the companies were open about there activities , so stop farmer bashing our farmers are the best in the world they care about there livestock .
exactly as previous comment big multi national feed compnies put meat nd bone meal in feed as protein it was misslabled farmers did not know about it and strangely nought most of it came from france
Michael Brown, your post is like a microcosm of the article – and following the same line of argument, it is therefore exactly the farmers’ fault for buying cheap feed from producers that cut costs.
And as for another poster’s idea that consumers have been selfish and don’t care for anything other than cheap food – let’s not forget that such budgeting is necessary to support other needs like raising a family and maintaining a home. People care about a lot of things, and just because local food producers may be occasionally overlooked doesn’t mean that everyone has totally lost their ability to empathise.
“BSE was a result of feed companies cutting corners the said companies DID NOT TELL FARMERS what they were putting in there feeds”
Surely that statement alone vindicates the masses and contraditcs Anonymous point. Surely if the farmers didn’t know what was in the feed and bought because they trusted the food producers which resulted in BSE being introduced into the food chain, why should you now blame the public for eating food that was in exactly the same way provided by ‘experts’ ? If the experts tell us repeatedly that the food IS ok, then why SHOULDN’T we trust them?
I’m a city living worker ant. I have only a very high level of awarness as to how food is produced. I don’t have time to go and figure out how to farm, nor do I want to. That’s not the choice I made in life. I rely on expert opinion and governent regulation to keep things moving in the right directin. We have specialists in each area who are experts in their field and whom the rest of society can trust to do what it is they’re there to do.
You trusted the food companies that let you down.
We trusted the food companies who let us down.
If we the general public are to blame for the current food crisis then using the same logic you, the farmers, are to blame for BSE.
And as, Anonymous, you agreed with Michaels statement about the Food Comapnies being responsible for BSE you have really shown your core argument to be totally flawed.
There is a very strong feeling that BSE was actually caused by compulsory warble fly dressing. There are many, many articles that endorse it. It is not recognised by the Government because it was compulsory and there would be huge compensations to pay. See for starters here http://www.cqs.com/opmadcow.htm and read on please.
BSE,CAUSED BY THE ANIMALS FEED CONTENT NOT BEING COOKED AT A HIGH ENOUGH TEMPERATURE,THIS WAS SANCTIONED BY THE GOVERNMENT OF THAT TIME ALLOWING THE LOWRING OF THE TEMPERATURE.THIS IS MY DEDUCTION FROM EXTENSIVE INFORMATION GLEANED AT THAT TIME. .ANIMALS THAT DID NOT HAVE THAT CONTAMINATED FEED ,FOR EXAMPLE DEXTER CATTLE WERE VERTUALY BSE FREE WHO WAS AT FAULT?
Not to be blunt but we, us cheapskates, get forced to buy these foodstuffs for the lowest price we can because we struggle to afford it any other way. I get all my meat from the local butchers: I can afford one joint of beef a week (I keep meaning to ask them about offal to see if I can make a saving going through that), and that’s a luxury. The majority of us do care, but as the very short comment above points out, that’s capitalism. We don’t get paid enough to buy decent food, so we try to save some money to get by. Basic biology means that we have a strong demand for meat. When it’s met cheaply we easily succumb to it, we forget that you can do meals without it. We buy our food cheaply, though we try to stay away from the cheapest (you can see the grading clearly, when people have the money they’ll spend it on better food) if we can. This affects you in the way described above (I presume most people here live in the countryside and a good proportion of you are involved in farming). Taking people round a local farm (if they can afford a car, I certainly can’t) will help a little, but not that much, because it still doesn’t remove the basic problem: a social demand for meat and very little money in the hands or ordinary people. The entire system fosters it, and blaming one of the other groups of struggling people (greedy farmers/thoughtless townies) won’t change it. What needs to change is the entire system to an effective, planned economy that allows people to get what they need without screwing each other over.
bse was a failure of experts and industry, of not truely recognising that prions could survive heat treatment. the rendering process was not efficient enough in some facilities to denature the prion protein. you cannot blame farmers. however this is total diffirent to the process which is going on in the human food chain. those people acted within the law set out by MAF compared to the organisations which seem to be acting in the human food chain. i think the main sentiment in this argument is wrong, however i do understand the frustration that people seem upset about something people in agriculture have predicted. hopefully this will strenghen the consumer market to look to buy british produce and educate them into our better welfare and quality; however i very much suspect than in 12 months time the market will have returned to its rock bottom price structuring.
the population of this country have a decission to make, they need to be less short sighted. if they prefer paying rock bottom prices for food then the countryside they now and love will dissapear and be replaced with big agribusiness who are forced into economies of scale. farming in this country is on its knees, prices for feed, bedding and stock are high and payout for milk is only just recovering from the 6p drop last summer. Britain faces a situation where farming is dieing out, few young people coming in. please give farming a future and support local markets, farms and producers.
if you truely want to know where you food comes from then the only way you can be 100% sure is to buy it at the farm gate!
except that you cannot be 100% sure of what your buying even if you stand at the farm gate, you have no idea what the cows are being fed, or if they are being injected with anything to enhance the meat yield in them or to enhance the flavour of the meat.
You don’t know if the meat your buying at the gate has actually come from the cows in the field or if it has been purchased elsewhere and shipped to the farm to be portrayed as cattle that have been grazing at the farm.
That is what criminals do, they run scams and cons, sometimes on farmers, sometimes on processing plants, sometimes on abbatoirs, the criminals often don’t come from the industry and sometimes the criminals are farmers.
Your right, we need to make a decision, mine is not to eat meat anymore.
That’s right the heat treatment failed to do it’s job, it did for a time but then the animal feed producers under pressure from consumers (farmers) to provide cheaper feed, asked the Government to lower the minimum heat temperature that the feed was exposed to in order to save money on the expensive heating of the products.
Kinda like consumers (meat eaters) asking supermarkets for cheaper meat.
But do supermarkets who are all reporting massive profits and increases in profits actually have to buy insufficiently tested products to get us our cheaper products, do they have to force supplierers to sell at low prices if they are making all that profit ? or does this just show that even if the consumers en-masse say we will pay more the supermarkets will continue to buy cheap and make even more profit ?
Is it the consumer that is driving the price down or the supermarkets ?
What about if a cap was put on profit, for arguments sake let’s sayd that each link in the cahin could only make a maximum of 5% profilt on thier goods, the animal feed suppliers 5% the farmer makes 5% profit, the abbatoir 5%, the processing plants 5% and the supermarkets 5%
Well said!
Farmers did not give anyone BSE, the meat and bone meal may have done following a change of policy on rendering
Good Point. I hope they learned from that. Really stupid to feed dead animal protein to herbivores when they normally get it through the food cahin cycle. i.e. when it has gone thrpught the decomposition and carbon cycle to once more be eaten as grass. What were tghey thinking. aA right scientific cock up!
that is why i am a veggie
Don’t blame you.
Me too, for nearly 30 years now. Don’t buy much meat for the rest of the family these days. When we do it’s a ‘treat’ for them
and we go to the local butchers on a Saturday.
Enjoyed the article and will be showing to my meaty mates.
How can you possibly be a vegetarian, based on animal welfare, and eat milk and eggs?
Yeap.
Vegetarian and veganism can be cheap, and can protect the planet a lot more.
As long as both choices are organic, where possible, or insect-friendly – if we’re going to stop bees and butterflies from becoming extinct in the UK, we need to try as much as we can with our limited budgets, and limited voices, to fight for no-pesticide, wildlife friendly farming of our fruit, vegetables, cereal crops (and dairy produce if you eat that stuff).
With regards to:
‘The number of people who can’t afford adequate amounts of food is tiny – tragic and wrong, yes, but tiny. Supermarkets don’t make their billions from them hunting in the “reduced” basket, they make their money from millions of everyday folk filling a weekly trolley. You, in other words.’
I would like to see links to research here to prove this statement before I can believe it. A variety of sources, all reliable and peer-reviewed.
Kind regards.
Yeah, but I’m not furious. I hate this style of aggressively written ‘journalism’ that assumes that everyone reading is either being taught a lesson or has differing opinions to the author.
yup..am with you! The fact is ..anyone that cares enough to read that article wouldn’t be buying frozen meals anyway, so he has the demographic totally wrong. Clearly an animal lover..but not a people person -(
Plants have feelings too! stop murdering plants! just cause plants don’t have faces doesn’t mean they don’t feel pain… fact is they do feel pain but they don’t have the capability of crying out!
Fact is some animals are on the Earth as food sources for other animals humans included… you’d have Lions eat carrots? don’t think so…
We are omnivores for a reason…
Or, you could stop slaughtering innocent animals in their millions to eat and killing them for joy as in sport. If YOU actually cared, you would research how little protein you really need, how you can get that from fruit and vegetables. Search ‘The China Study’ for comprehensive research. Did you know that people have been shouting out for YEARS that the Government data used to ‘inform’ the public about daily nutrition requirements and carbohydrate/fat/protein ratio’s were manipulated by ‘Big Meat’ companies including small butchers? You are selling pain and suffering, stating that we got what we want and that we don’t care. Well, you are a hypocrite. You only care about smaller amounts of money going to smaller businesses. You ignore the suffering of animals and the effect it has on the land, economy and people. How many drugs enter the food chain that are banned here but not elsewhere? Or banned elsewhere but not here? What you have written is utter rubbish.
Humans have eaten meat since they’re inception. It’s unnatural to NOT eat meat. I always think vegetarians are just weird.
well said! If people actually “cared” they wouldn’t eat ANY animals. I have no sympathy for the meat farming industry, who make big bucks from animal suffering. People can argue that meat is “natural” and that people have been doing it for years, but you could argue the same for any murder-it doesn’t make it right! Millions of people are living perfectly healthy lives on a plant based diets (myself included) so it proves it can be done. (but only of you CARE!!)
I am sooooo agree with you
It doesn’t matter what kind of meat it is and where is it from, before meat it was someone who also felt the pain and suffering and sorrow and he desired to live as much as we do and as much as we are afraid of death. In my opinion cancer and heart disease is a punishment for human stupidity and lack of compassion.I’m a vegan for a year, at the beginning only for health, everyone knows that vegetarians and vegans rarely get sick from diseases of civilization. because of the very seriously ill I changed my diet to vegan, and already after 6 months I could discontinue all medications, and now I’m 100% healthy and happy. after that I found out how meat companies deceive us for money, and how many innocent animals are killed just for the money. We no longer live in the Middle Ages, we do not need someone’s blood on our hands to live.
I think you need to do your research into the meat industry and slaughter before you accuse every animal in the food industry of “suffering”. There are literally hundreds of regulations to stop any kind of suffering of animals before their slaughter, and being a vet i have been taught about all of them so maybe think about that before you go shouting your mouth off.
I was wondering why nobody had cried about the poor animals being eaten yet. Well, here it is. I was actually looking for this type of humaniac response. It surprises me that there weren’t any before this one.
“If God didn’t want us to eat animals, he wouldn’t have made them out of meat!” I love that quote. Man was given canines for a reason. We are omnivores, not herbivores. God gave us animals of many different kinds. Some are for companionship, some are to labor for us, some are to keep the other animals in check, and some are for eating. I do not think we are supposed to eat carnivorous animals, but I think herbivores are for eating. Horses are my favorite animal. I love them dearly and do not believe they should be eaten. I, personally, would NEVER eat one. I can’t stand it that some people do, but I think in the natural order of things, they can be. I do not believe people should eat dogs or cats, not because of their domesticity, but because of their composition and dietary habits. I love animals. I have quite a few, including horses, goats, chickens, rabbits, etc. I also have several dogs and cats. I love them all and I treat them with love and respect. We are raising a couple of pigs, which we intend to eat. I do not believe in mistreating animals. I do not believe in killing animals for trophies. I especially abhor it when they are driven to the brink of extinction.being killed for their body parts for impotent Chinese men who believe everything is an aphrodisiac.They have decimated herds of animals like the rhinos for their horn, the sharks for their fins, the dolphins, etc. I can’t imagine a culture that is so impotent that they require so many animals just to get their rocks off! It’s revolting. Elephants are wiped out for their stupid teeth! Really? No, I don’t think God gave us animals to be abused, but they are not human and he did put them here to feed not only man, but other animals as well. I don’t think he put them on this beautiful earth to be wasted, squandered, eliminated because some human decides they don’t like a specific species and wants to eliminate it, such as our beautiful wolves, wild horses, and others. People are made to eat meat. I, personally, like it. I do not feel like I am going against any universal order of things. I believe in moderation, being responsible, and never to waste natural resources. But eating meat is not a bad thing in my book, provided the animals are treated humanely until death. That is the thing you should be fighting for. I do not believe in abuse and so many animals endure horrible wretched treatment in stock yards and butchering plants. I am very much against cruelty, but eating meat itself is not a crime, nor should it be.
I know how little protein I need…. I just choose to eat meat protein
but I only buy from local producers… We are friends with most of ours…we take our cider press apple pp up to the farm and feed it to the pigs… They are slaughtered locally so have no transport to endure apart from a mile or two… They have lovely lives and a humane stress free death….and they taste delicious too!!!
Apart from big animal meat we eat our own chickens ducks and geese… Yummy!!!
What a load of uninformed rubbish, what has this got to do with people wanting cheaper products ?
This is about criminals wanting to make money, nothing more nothing less.
Do you honestly think that this is only happening with horsemeat in cheap products ?
Where have you been for the last 200 years ?
Offered a nice looking watch in Asda for £5 do you think it might be fake or just a product made cheaply and sold cheaply ?
Offered a Rolex at a cheap price do you think “hang on it might be fake, it might not be quite what I am expecting to get for my money”
Have a quick chat with your Trading Standards Officers, it’s rarely cheap products that are copied or changed, made cheaper with cheaper ingredients (often dangerous ingredients) it is Smironoff Vodka, Rolex Watches, Armani Perfume, Gucci Handbags, Beluga Caviar , Foi gras, Free Range eggs, Organic foods, you surely cannot believe that criminals are only targetting cheap products. There is much more profilt to be had in targetting more expensive goods as happens on a grand scale.
And the farmers, I didn’t want to sell you crap but I was forced to do it by price won’t help you in court when your cheaper chicken feed or drug filled cattle kill people.
Of course we are skin flints, of course we want cheaper food, some people have to economise, I myself am a war pensione WIA in the Falklands War many years ago, my War Pension was reduced 2 months ago in accordance with new government rules, I now only get £538 a month to live on, FULL STOP, no other benefits, none of my bills paid for me, £538 for food, gas, electricity, rent and rates and all the luxuries I buy with what’s left of my £110 a week.
Your dead right I want cheap food I don’t have a choice. I wish I could afford to support British Farmers I grow as much as I can in my garden and I make all my own ready meals in large batches to freeze, I switch my heating off when I go to bed and put it on about 4 hours after I get up, my pc was a gift from my family and I am lucky enough to have neighbours who allow me to use thier WIFI connection, it is not only food where people like me economise it is with everything.
The main reason why Butchers shops are targetted less is because criminals want to offload stuff quickly so supply to the big factories who have the big contracts and will buy in bulk not because they have anymore rigid checks thatn the smaller suppliers that often only supply to smaller outlets.
Life in the UK has had to change, We don’t have masses of coalmines anymore because it cost more to get coal to the surface than we could sell it for, steel, coal and many other traditional British Industries are gone because we had to buy cheaper abroad, sad as that may be it is the real world and farming is no different.
Farmers may not be rich, they may struggle just not as much as some of us have to.
Here here…. Finally someone writing how it is!!!
You’re not that bright, are you? This is entirely about demand for cheaper food! That is what has driven suppliers to continually reduce the quality of their meat – they need to make money to remain in business. To get the quality of meat the people seem to want, we are going to have to pay more than we do at the moment. That may well mean eating less meat, but we are just going to have to deal with it. Or stop whining and just keep eating horse on the cheap.
This is a very good point. Wages and pensions haven’t kept pace with inflation, so it’s very difficult to make ends meet on a low income. I’m very, very fortunate to live in Southern California where I can get high quality produce at the farmers’ markets year round for a reasonable price, but quite a few folks can’t. Is cheap food and lack of scrutiny a problem? Of course it is, but like anything else in life it’s not as simple as we’d like to make it.
I don’t know about the UK, but here in the US, trash calories from chemically bleached goo and soda are cheaper than wholesome food, and that’s an enormous problem when trying to convince anyone on a budget to try to eat healthy.
Fantastic reply Jed, right on the money. Sickens me that some people here are even defending the farmers starting BSE!
wow what a load of venom!!, I agree with the retired veteren, so many people are barely getting by, even those of us who are lucky to have both partners working still struggle to buy food for our kids along with paying fuel bills etc . Farmers i am afraid have reaped what they sowed, for years their greed made it difficult for mr and mrs average to buy meat too often, I always cook my own meals and dont really use ready mades but that means we only have meat maybe 2 or 3 times a week sometimes less. personally if my local butcher sold joints of horse meat i wouldnt have a problem buying it No one i know has died from mad horse disease and i have never seen anyone galloping down the high street jumping benches and litter bins as they go so what is the problem other than people thought they were paying for cheap beef? When i was a kid i stayed in france on a school exchange trip and we ate horsemeat sausages and i have to say they were lovely and far nicer than the pink dyed bread and crap we buy here in supermarkets.Yes it was wrong not to label the product clearly and admit to the use of horse meat but in the long run no one has been harmed, and i for one would welcome seeing butchers sell horse, rabbit and other cheaper but readily available fresh meat, You cant blame people for trying to get by the best they can, our disabled people are having their benefits cut and our elderly are struggling to keep warm, in my view this is a far greater shame than a bit of cheap meat in a few sauces and lasagne’s
Jed,
You are genuinely struggling for cash, and most of us sympathise with that. If you read the article again, the author accepts that there are people like you, and he is NOT blaming people like yourself. He’s blaming people like me who walk into the supermarket and buy the cheapest chicken, rather than paying a little extra for a free-range, farm reared, local bird.
The market is in a constant race to the bottom, and it’s not your fault, it’s mine. If people like me were more consciencious about what we buy, the quality improvements would affect the whole supply chain, and even the budget products that you rely on would be higher quality.
Please accept my apologies for the harm that my purchasing choices have done to you
I think the problem here is actually very simple:
Money.
Truth.
How many of us are actually poor? Struggling?
The author of the article believes it to be a minority yet, what is the truth?
And I mean on an EU level too.
However, is poverty an excuse for eating meat?
Owing to recent poverty, (I was on £45 a week for bills and food – not rent) I have begun to eat cheese, eggs, and even meat when I am offered it. Now my financial situation is slightly better, I am beginning to try and choose again. However, I could have just eaten Co-op simply value wholemeal bread (it’s not organic but will be free from bee-harming pesticides) dairy free spread and Morrison’s own marmite. And some weeks, that is pretty much what I lived off except for a slightly more balanced evening meal. I managed to get my food bill down to £10-15 a week, but I became ill though and realised I need to budget for a bit more fresh fruit and vegetables so I get my vitamins eg. C and K.
To keep my health levels up I try and spend lots of time outdoors, to offset the fact that I can’t afford to buy 5-a-Day of fruit and vegetables.
I don’t get many coughs and colds but will see in 20-30 years time if I get cancer etc… Interesting point put by someone that government figures about nutrition (eg. eat 1000mg of calcium a day) are manipulated by the food industry.
Certainly, when I had enough money to do so, trying to fit in all the nutrients that I am supposed to fit in each day was difficult – even became overweight. How much protein do we actually need?
Nutritional science is still developing – on one hand, we have been told for 50+ years to eat cow’s milk products because it’s high in calcium. Then, some scientists/fringe thinkers wrote books telling us that actually, although many are high in calcium, animal products also make us wee out (excrete) calcium. Will we discover an extra fact in this condundrum? Has somebody discovered it already, ie, does calcium need to be excreted and regularly replaced?
Anyway, some thoughts.
The reading and drinking comment wasn’t aimed at you Jed but the idiot who believes this article should be put on the front page of every newspaper exclaiming its the best thing he’s ever read!
This is so daft you blame farmers etc, have you ever been to a farmers market where the animals are actually sold, lambs sell for an average of £50 per head which usually equates to £1.76 per kilo, cattle make on average £1.46 to £1.87 per kilo, in 1975 lambs sold on average £68 per head, all sheep and cattle have to be double tagged, thats the EU rules, all medication given to the animals has to be written down into a medical book, all animals moved have to noted, a lot of sheep and cattle are fed of whats known as vegetable waste which is basically the extra large veg that the supermarket rejected this is sold at between £8 to £19 per ton, now think about the supermarkets how much are their carrots if purchased per ton, isnt it 1 bag of carrots for approx £1.00 you might just get 1kg, ok no times that by 1000, so the general public are paying £1000 per ton, so who is actually making the money???
So a few questions
How much is lamb per kilo in the supermarket £
How much is beef per kilo in the supermarkets
Its not just a case of visiting a farm, you really need to speak to them to find out what is really going on, n how much care actually goes into rearing them, I know one farmer who makes a profit of £6000 per year, ask yourselves would you work 24/7 for that.
We buy a whole lamb from a local farmer n split it between 4 of us.
Would I work for £6000 a year after expenses such as my home bills which are part of a farmers costs before profit
Too right I would, I live on an army war pension of £538 per month out of which I have to pay my rent, council tax, electricity and gas, after that I just squander the rest on women, beer and fags.
Then I have people in here telling me I am to blame for the horsemeat in my food because I am too much of a skinflint to buy decent quality food
Well said Jed…. But as I have proved to my friends we can eat good quality food on a budget… We’re lucky, we have access to friends land… I bought 2 goslings last year for £3 each and they spent the year grazing and clearing our allotment of slugs etc…. We spent about £10 on pellets for them…it was lovely having home produced geese for Christmas dinner… And the eggs too… We all like a bargain but my objection is food labelling….
Jed, that farmer has 2 people working on it as in his wife n him, reference his home bills being part of it, heating, electric and food do not go against the business, ref fuel and phone only a percentage is used, council tax again doesn’t go against the business, you see the land they have or rent, not the overdraft n stress they go through. Before judging farmers talk to them
Then don’t judge me, deciding that the farmer is worse off than many others because he is a farmer, many of us have even less to live on than he does, I have a nephew and neice who are tennant farmers (two farms with thier spouses) I know that not all farmers are making great profits and that many don’t but people trying to tell me they are the only ones struggling get me down, so many here are blaming the consumer for the plight of farmers and the reason criminals are targeting meat when the only winners I see are the supermarkets who demand the low prices whilst continuously declaring massive profits and increased profits.
This article should be printed on the front page of every newspaper ,it is the best written piece I have seen for a long time
Oh dear……..:(
What the hell have you been reading?!! Or should I say drinking?!
No I am not that bright, I have never pretended to be a scholar or educated person, I am not educated, failed my 11+ and joined the army at 16, but I know how much I have to spend and I know how to make my small amount of income keep me alive,
I buy cheap products through necessity not desire as I am sure all those in the same position do.
I would love to be in a position to buy the best cuts of meat from the best places that sell it.
I personally have never considered Burger King, Findus, Birds Eye or many of the other brands affected by this fraud to be “budget food” they are certainly not supermarket own brands and nobody can deny that fraud in products we purchase is widespread but predominantely in the higher end of the quality market where profits are greater if you use inferior ingrediants or materials.
What have I been reading ….. the packaging on the products I buy which says 100% beef, what have I been drinking ..,,,,,, Tea, I do not drink alchol.
As I said, I am happy to buy horsemeat based products if they are cheaper than Pork, Beef or chicken, but I want what it says on the tin, label it as horseburger and I wll buy it, because I buy what I can afford, I know cheaper brands may contain things to make them more profitable, I know the cheap chicken I buy has a high water content, but I enjoy it, it is passed as fit for human consumption and I can afford it.
What I don’t want is fake products, a bottle of Smironoff Vodka should be made by Smironoff and be made with the ingredients shown on the bottle, not something with a false, copied label and containing cheaper often dangerous ingredients, Beef Lasagne should contain beef, sell me horse lasagne at the right price.
Much of the sudden influx of horsemeat has been brought about by certain Eastern European countries bans on horses or donkeys using roads.
Is the man who buys a Citroen or BMW a skinflint for buying that car and not a Porshce, Ferrari or Rolls Royce or is he simply living within his budget ?
No wonder you people use the name anonymous for your posts shame and embarassment is sad thing to have to live with and insults about my intelligence say more about you than they do about me
There are good bits and bad bits….
Jed Philips… I’m going to take you to task over a comment in your post… This time last week I heard the same comment on bbc radio 4 and on radio 2…I absolutely knew it was lies so dug deep and saw that the hippest comment about Romania banning horse driven vehicles on roads has led to a surplus of horses which had then entered the food chain…..this was reported by the daily mirror and picked up by bbc….. All totally made up! And oy serves to reinforce stereotypes that Brits have about faraway countries and the folk who live there… 1. Horse drawn vehicles have not and will not be banned from Romanian roads, I sent bbc 12 photos I took of horse drawn vehicles, whole I was on a recent trip to Romania……
2.romanian meat production plants have been vindicated… The mahoosive processing plant in France seems to be much more involved!!!
Herbytod, thankyou for that enlightenment, it is not often that the media get it wrong about such things and it is good to hear that the horse drawn vehicles will continue to use the roads in Romania.
Please do not think for one second that I have any feelings against Romanians or any other Eastern Europeans,
Nor do I have a problem with eating horsemeat, I do have a problem with people blaming the poorer amongst us for creating a situation where criminals can operate when it is a known fact that criminals target every area of the food chain from caviar, foi fras, alcohol and fish to lower priced processed foods. Yes we buy them but we are still poor, the supermarkets however continue to report higher profits each year, it is not the public that are gaining from driving prices and standards down.
Oh and my partner is Lithuanian
Excellent piece and very good advice.
VIRGIN
I totally agree and am going to go one stage further and say that… it also has a lot to do with population growth and over demand on food as a whole by people who think deserve more. Every problem on this planet derives from one main problem… POPULATION SIZE. If you have one small Anglo saxon village with 100 people, demand is low for food, everybody has a job and everyone knows everyone else. It is not exceptable to rape, pillage, or plunder… especially within your own community. But anyway going slightly off topic, sorry. Going back to food I have to say that going by statistics, at some point I have eaten horse meet… didn’t complain about the taste then so guess I liked it. pretty much all animals are food it’s just whether it is seen as being acceptable or not. I bet very few people on here would kill a cow, but you’d all eat one!
Yes I would eat a cow, No I would not kill one, we each have our trades, I went to war to protect farmers and others, Policemen walk the streets dealing with drunks armed only with a truncheon and spray, or face a gun weilding grenade carrying maniac would you want to do that, I wouldn’t, we rely on each other.
Saying we get inferior food because we want cheap food is fine so it is our own faults, I can accept, if you can accept that it is farmers faults they gave us BSE because they bought cheap animal feed ……..
I am willing to go to court and answer a charge of buying cheap food
Are farmers willing to go to court and answer a charge of passing BSE onto humans ?
are you serious?
I’m a vegan and there are many reasons that I do not eat meat. However, I do realize that the vast majority of people do not have a problem with consuming animal products. I definitely agree with the articles idea that people need to care more and be better informed and while the article is well written and sounds researched, there aren’t any sources cited. I have a hard time believing the statement that only a tiny number of people can’t afford to eat better. I think that if people could afford better quality food they would buy it for the most part. Of course some people make decisions based on other things such as convenience, but I think the lack of sources for this “tiny number” statement really detracts from the article.
I live in Sweden and we have the same cow-meat-evolved-to-horse-meat problem. All the responsable companyes ar finding other companyes to blame on but in the essence i think we all should learn a lesson. Cheap food is dangerous . Allways. If you get one drink and one hotdog for 1 euro or less you should think twice before buiyng that …On the other hand it is allso true that here (Malmö) you can buy swedish cow meat in the “respectable” places for 12-15-20 euro/kg as in the “other” places you can buy it for 6-8/euro/kg. Now we all know that there must be some difference , we aint stupid in that way but that does´nt mean that it can be from other animals then espected…Allmost everybody can read today , so there is no surprize if on the chickennuggets description you find out that those chiken meat comes from Brasil. We all get that , i think, but that does´nt mean that in the nuggets we sould find any traces of tropical birds or ?
Thank you for starting this topic !
It’s not only our cattle farms that are gone and going but veg producing farms too.
we used to go to the local farm shop but they have all gone now.
And you will be lucky if you can fined moor than three butcher shops in Peterborough
that are not in supermarkets.
Actually, Peterborough is one of the better places for farm shops if you have access to a car. I tend to buy everything from Willowbrook Farm, just past Marholm, and they have a frankly massive selection available – it also doesn’t cost a premium over decent cuts from the supermarket range.
There’s also some good veg shops if you look around – it does involve a bit of travel, but there’s a fairly big veg farm shop on the way into Wisbech, for example…
I do still use a supermarket for some things – stocking up on household items, cola etc, but that’ll be ended once Amazon start shipping those products at lower prices like they do in the U.S.
You’r cutting your nose off to spite your face buying from Amazon. They are an American company so your money leaves the uk and they don’t pay their taxes. They use loopholes to avoid this so the money doesn’t go to the uk that rightfully should. Buy British that’s the message as much as you can. Cola also exploits 3rd world countries and uses their water supply which deprives millions of safe drinking water. Buy British made Cola rather than american brands we are far more considerate. Our British products are being bought out by americans. There is a reason why they are the wealthiest company. They are skilled in greed! They know we are greedy and tempt our weaknesses by undercutting and buying everything that makes a profit. Soon you won’t have a choice. Everything will be American owned and run. That will be your fault, not the Americans. They are just doing business. Make your choices wisely. I love my country and our culture. Lets keep Britain great.
Willowbrook farm is fantastic. The best steaks I’ve ever eaten. Cost a bit more but the quality shines through
Sad thing is, Americans can’t buy American! Everything we have is made in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Bangladesh or India. Nothing is even made in America anymore. So don’t even go there! We Americans are in the same position as you Brits are!
I have never been to Peterborough, but I looked on Yell.com and found 34 butchers shops in Peterborough on thier website alone, alarmist is putting it mildly methinks
A fine read, like a breath of fresh air, and what so many of us have said for way too long, shouting into the wind, will this be enough to change mentality, I wonder, or will we be back there before we know it, thronging the bargain meat counter?
The more people who can highlight and share this opinion, the brighter hope we have of changing customer mentality.
In the meantime, suppliers of quality meats, vegetables etc, will have a fiercer fight to survive, as they have to jump through increased regulation to keep producing their honest fayre. Darkest before the dawn perhaps?
From someone who works for a farmer a butcher, and who is – quite frankly – sick to death of being accused of snobbishness because I won’t buy from a supermarket, thank you. If only this had happened before all but a few high streets had died.
I did my work experience in a Farm Shop, and then proceeded to work through the summer between my 1st and 2nd year of uni at the local market butcher. I work for one of the big supermarkets, but I won’t buy the meat we stock.
I want quality, I want friendly service… oh, and I quite like seeing the cows in the field as I enter the farm to go to the shop – its nice to know where my Sunday roast is coming from!
what a brilliant article, what we have been saying for so long falling on deaf ears. SO many small farms now gone as could never compete with the big boys, now we know why don’t we. Wish this could be the start of small shops coming back, and people actually cooking meals from scratch which is NOT expensive if done properly, is this just a dream or could it now happen?????
Well I read in a local paper that small butchers have seen an increase in sales following the horsemeat scandal so something might be coming of it.
What probably needs to happen though is it actually becomes a lucrative enough sector for new businesses to start forming.
farmer *and* butcher, whoops.
Fab article! You are totally right! We set ourselves the change to be local shoppers on a budget to prove it is possible! And guess what its more than possible – we have saved loads, eaten really well and know where our food comes from http://www.ayearwithoutsupermarkets.com
nice, to see an article that has the same ideas I have been speaking about with friends and colleagues…I will only buy British and I have had reduced the amount of meat I eat cos I only want to eat quality British produce.
It still baffles me why we import meat and even worse milk from abroad….we can and should supply our selves before we need to buy in..
Have you not seen the news about dodgy British abattoirs? Oh no! British rural folk are all so wonderful. What’s wrong with eating horses anyway? It’s a good stable diet; and they’re off…
Did you mean to say ‘stable’ or should it have been ‘staple’?
I’d have thought the ‘and they’re off’ comment would have cleared that up for you..
Reblogged this on girlinwellies and commented:
Brilliantly written & smacks the nail on the head!
Unfortunately theres a generation out there that genuinely cant cook, really very sad and the implications are frightening for public health in general. If these skills aren’t learnt at home they need to be essential learning in the school environment.
The school environment is being jam packed with a million different schemes and programmes. Primary schools across the country are now holding breakfast clubs because parents can’t be arsed to feed their children at home. Homework clubs are in place because parents have no interest in making their children do the homework set for their benefit and education. How long until it turns into sleepover club for parents that can’t be bothered to walk their children to schoo? Secondary schools shouldn’t have to bear the burden of children not knowing how to cook but unfortunately this seems to be the only way that we’ll produce citizens that are worth anything. It saddens me greatly.
Those clubs cater mainly for working parents that can’t afford childcare fees NOT parents that cant be arsed feeding their kids.
“How long until it turns into sleepover club for parents that can’t be bothered to walk their children to schoo?”
I suppose that depends on how long before the government expects us to work day and night just to feed the kids we apparently don’t give a toss about.
I think the rest of your comments is equally uninformed. #Outoftouchmuch?
Sleepover clubs DO exist – they’re called boarding schools. They’re for people who can’t be bothered bringing up their own children.
I’m 25, and I’d like to share the dishes that I was taught to cook in my Food Technology classes in high school:
* Apple Crumble
* Buns
* Coleslaw
* Pizza (had to provide a shop-bought base)
* Sandwiches
Thank goodness for Mum & Grandmas teaching me the basics and then the reality of moving away to uni and the trial and error of cooking for myself (often with slim pickings in the fridge).
If you go back to my Grandma’s generation (she’s 84), she learnt Domestic Science and she learnt how to cook a three course meal, what to do with the leftovers, etc. My Grandma often recalls a story of me begging her to be the school dinner lady when I was 4, because my Mum refused to let me have school dinners, and I couldn’t sit with my friends who did eat school dinners because I had a packed lunch.
Having been a primary teacher for 15 years I can definite say that there are plenty of children who’s parents can’t be arsed giving them breakfast etc!!
i dont think there are many teachers that could teach children to cook, the responsability should lie with the parents and they are so busy working to pay for meals from the supermarket .
Well said – xxx
What a loads of cods. This is the same as saying that because my house has nice things in it it is my fault it was burgled. Rubbish. It is the criminal fraternities fault no more no less. If we, as a society, make rules, good or bad or exploitable or not, it is not ‘our fault’ that criminal elemnts then take advantage. You cannot excuse criminal elements by saying ‘well you asked for it’. That simply is not how a modern society works. I am a supprter of buying british and supporting what we have in this country. I do not like the rules and regulatuons imposed on us that only we have to adhere to. However I also do not like, or support in any way whatsoever criminal elements that exploit the British idea of fairness. Blame the people who are criminally making profit from us. Not the gebneral public who frankly has little say in what goes on anyway.
Dream on – the cheap food myth is what caused this fiasco and that myth is a joint collusion of supermarket and consumer. No one has a “right” to cheap food, or to spend the least possible fraction of household income on food to free up cash for cigs, booze and sky subs. Time to take responsibility for what you eat and face up to what modern society has done to the environment and animal welfare in the blind rush to cheap food
I am afraid you couldn’t be more wrong, its the Supermarkets that drive the prices down in all spheres, just to get customers through the door, where once in will also buy other goods etc., they will take a real loss on certain items to get you to buy others. I know this for fact as I used to work for one of the biggest Supermarkets.
I work all hours day and night and still have to “shop” around as we don’t have that much to spend on food as we would like, so we need some of the bargains, we don’t drink/smoke or in fact go out at all, so bang goes your theory about needing cheap food to subsidise all of the above.
I do feel for the Farmers as I live in a Rural area, but be assured they did live off the fat of the land/subsidies from Government for a very long time, now they are all being taken away its this they are feeling the most, I wish someone would pay me not to plough up/plant a field I owned
Hmmm, nice stereotype there. Perhaps some of us buy cheap food so that we can pay for our children to go to fun clubs, a cheap holiday, clothing, the mortgage, bills and all the other normal household expenses that add up. If I choose to prioritise these over meat from butcher, that is my choice and I should not feel like it is my fault that crimals put horse meat in burgers. Incidently, I would happily eat horsemeat if it was confirmed safe.
I dont really agree with your point about having nice things in your house means you deserve to be burgled! Thats an absurd argument… Having nice things in your house would mean you put deterrents in place, in order to protect your goods, such as an alarm, secure locks and warnings. Just like rules are set around food standards and make it harder for criminals to act and subsequently meant our British controlled abattoirs closed as it made it too difficult for legit trade. Had you simply left your front door open or a window, just like sourcing food from countries where we have no controls, well does simply mean it is OUR fault.
Saying we have no control is admitting defeat! It’s people like you with your attitude which makes people like me have a much harder fight when trying to create a voice which can be heard. You really have no concept how powerful one voice can be, put that together with a force who will not stand by and watch this continue and who will as a group, refuse to buy these products, then the supermarkets will listen. They will listen because no one will buy what they are selling. Sad fact is, these people dont care enough and will continue to fuel the beast that is Tesco’s and the like.
Personally education is the cure in this instance. The more we educate the importance of our food sources, the importance of cooking, the importance of British growth, the sooner this problem will end.
Read my response more carefully. My point is exactly that. It is absurd to accuse the general public that having nice things invites burgulary. Just as absurd as accusing the general public that it is thier fault that criminals are substituting horse meat for beef.
I also did not say we have no control. I did say that the general public do not but that is not the same.
I take exception to your one sided view of what concepts I do or do not have. You have no knowledge of me whatsoever and cannot make any judgement on what concepts I have or not.
This problem will never end whilst there are criminals out there ready to take out of the system (whatever system) and not put back in. Do you honestly believe that people will not buy fromTesco or other supermarkets? Absolute dreamworld rubbish.
The answer to this is strong controls and legislation. As you intimated in your assertion that we would put detterents in place to help prevent our houses being burgled. That is exactly what we need to do here. It is the lack of legislation and the enforcement of that legislation that allows the unscrupulous the opportunity to take advantage and substitute substandard products.
Hear, hear! There’s a world of difference between pricing pressure and tolerating fraud. To conflate small and inefficient business failing to compete with larger, more efficient rivals with a company committing outright fraud is nonsense.
Xenophobia is no protection against mislabelling, either: a year or so ago, several restaurants near here were caught selling beef curries as lamb, since beef was cheaper, but can you get any more local or small business than an individual restaurant round the corner?!
What does puzzle me is that if a beef curry is cheaper to produce and customers didn’t complain, why they didn’t offer beef as an option in the first place! Ditto horse meat, particularly European chains like Lidl and Aldi; I suppose PETA’s attack on Gordon Ramsay was enough to intimidate others for a while, but I wouldn’t have any objection to buying horse steak, properly labelled and safe; I’ve eaten it before on the continent.
here here….surely you can expect to have inside the packet that that is being advertised on the packet absolutely nothing to do with price !!
Totally agree Pauli. It must be “our” fault the bankers got rich whilst going bust and “our” fault the energy companies are making a fortune whilst prices are so expensive the elderly are dying every winter “our” fault there’s corruption in the police force etc etc. We pay taxes and elect officials to regulate exactly this situation amongst others. We cant physically be there to oversee things ourselves and why would we when we pay extortionate taxes for inspectors to do it? When we protest, like between 1 and 2 million protested in london against the iraq war, it falls on deaf ears.
So well done for pointing out that we have a problem captain obvious, but what would you have us do? Boycott the supermarkets and spend days every week trawling all the different farm shops and high streets for hours and hours cooking our gourmet meals in between working 2 jobs raising a family and trying to squeeze some fun in somewhere. Yes we do go to the supermarkets because it is easier. If you want to make this a capital offence get off your soapbox and run for cabinet I’m sure you’ll fit right in there with all the other politicians who like to make life harder for the british public whilst telling us they’re doing us a favour. I’m sure I’ll get trampled now by the “Bravo Brigade” you seem to have attracted but maybe you are the ones that need to stop and think instead of swallowing every piece of drivel thats put on paper. Take a look now and then, and see what its like living in the real world in a recession. Where people struggle to make ends meet working hard day in day out. Not sat at a computer typing articles that may be well received in your specifically targeted audience, but I doubt it would go down too well with Joe public. We don’t like the state of things any better than you do but we are doing our best to deal with things.
The bottom line is they broke the law by cutting corners we never asked them to! They did it with their own greed, yours is the same argument paparazzi’s give to the public when stalking celebrities to the point of suicide. “You buy the papers”. We ask the media for the news, nothing else. Just as when we ask our food producers for beef we don’t expect them to break the law doing so and bring us horsemeat!
What guarantees would we have that farmers wont also cut similar corners given the opportunity? None, then we would be to blame again for letting them control our food production by your logic.
“…yours is the same argument paparazzi’s give to the public when stalking celebrities to the point of suicide. “You buy the papers”. We ask the media for the news, nothing else.”
Yes, that’s a very good analogy. The problem is that if people simply wanted news they wouldn’t buy tabloids, which are almost entirely news-free, or Heat magazine. Without a market for celeb photos there would be no celeb photos. The public gets what the public wants. And we wanted cheap meat. And that’s exactly what we got.
Thank goodness someone else reading this pile of total rubbish is normal. I am assuming they have links with the farming community and are looking for a bit of free publicity! No mention of BSE or any of the other problems that we’ve seen over the years.
Steven said: “The public gets what the public wants. And we wanted cheap meat. And that’s exactly what we got.”
But we didn’t get what we wanted! In fact that’s the whole reason people aren’t happy. We’re getting exactly what we didn’t ask for. Pay attention!
Hear hear!
If you want to be specific. We wanted cheap beef we didn’t ask for horsemeat. “Beef”burgers and “beef” lasagne.
Thank you for a refreshing article on this issue.
A fantastic article. Couldnt agree with you more. The public havent a clue what is going on, how the animals are suffering, the farmers going out of business and what the consumer is putting into their body.
Im just an everyday person, but one that cares about all of these issues.
I just hope the government and consumers think again.
Thanks for all the comments, very glad people (mostly) enjoyed it. Absolutely loved TeamPugh’s website (see comment trail) and what the family is trying to achieve. Deserves some media attention in the circumstances.
As for your objection Pauli, your burglary analogy doesn’t quite stack up. The reason these criminals have been able to do what they did stems from an artificially stretched supply chain borne of supermarkets’ obsession with pricing and, I’m afraid, all of that stems from them delivering what their customers want. Had customers taken an interest in the sourcing of their food and demanded quality above price the criminals wouldn’t have got away with it because supermarkets would have been sourcing from reputable suppliers.
A better analogy might be a man offering you a MacBook in a pub for £300. You didn’t steal it, but deep down you’re looking the other way so benefit from the prices. Ask no questions hear no lies…
I’d like to see you try and buy an entire weekly shop to feed two adults and a child on £40. I don’t have a car anymore…can’t afford the fuel. If I shopped at the local butchers, farm shop and deli in Winchcombe then we would go without gas, electric and water. Get in the real world! Oh and for the record, I cook every single meal from scratch!
I know it’s not the same as having a child but I feed two adults and a cat on £85 a month (and £12 of that is on the cat). How?, I buy veg from the local Asian market where it’s a lot cheaper than the supermarket. I bulk up meals (with meat bought from the local butcher) with lentils, rice or potatoes. It can easily be done and we eat well without having to rely on a supermarket. Yes, if you’re going to shop at delis you haven’t got a chance but to say ‘I have to buy cheap crap from the supermarket because we only have a food budget of £170 a month’ just means you haven’t spent that much time examining the alternatives.
I feed 2 adults and 2 children on £25 a week. Get in the real world!
Outstanding article! Well said!
I’ve seen the people who complain about the price of meat. Most if them are the size of a horse and could stand to eat half of what they do now anyway.
Yes. It’s bollocks. We’re not all guilty though and some of do care what we eat and where it comes from. So are we finally going to hunt the Health & Safety freaks to extinction, stop scrubbing ourselves in antibacterial goo 68 times a day, accept that you get nothing for nothing and start eating genuine, good quality food sourced from local farmers?
Actually…I gave up and moved to Australia. Can’t say the farming industry is perfect but it knocks the socks off the UK consumer market!
Very well said! You’ve expressed just what I’ve been thinking. I was a vegetarian for nearly 20 years and now just eat properly farmed organic meat, and not every day. Meat should be respected. Two chickens for a fiver? No thanks. Let’s hope this leads to some changes.
Endorse all you say and also enjoyed/admire the teampugh website. We’re lucky to still have a butcher in the village, a village shop AND an egg producer. Locally produced fruit and vegetables is another matter, however; whatever happened to seasonal vegetables from the UK I wonder. Tired of Kenyan green beans!!
Try Riverfords (http://www.riverfords.co.uk) for UK produced (mostly) organic fruit and veg.
Sorry That should have been http://www.riverford.co.uk . . .my bad
Weve been shipping horses off to Europe in poor conditions etc etc for years…..what did everyone think was happening with them ? Dog meat? Ha ! I’m willing to bet that if they test dog meat labelled “Beef” there will probably be more actual beef in it than a Findus Bolognaise.
Well said, thank you!! Your words are also doing the rounds on Facebook and rightly so! I’ve been banging on about buying locally and cooking it yourself for years!
I also think people have become immune to the artificial taste of processed food. It tastes like plastic to me and is wholly unsatisfying – never mind not knowing where the meat comes from, how the animal was kept, how far it has travelled to be on your plate… . It’s a pity people just can’t be bothered to cook any more. It doesn’t take long to knock up something delicious and wholesome whilst sourcing your food locally and supporting local businesses – and it’s not expensive if you cook it yourself (and don’t even get me started on bought sauces like Dolmio etc)!
Excellent points well made. I concur with the vast majority of these thoughts.
Cool story bro!
But so very true…
Quite true although I wouldn’t blame it all on the consumer! The fact of the matter is that we cannot say the regulations don’t work. They do work, but they work in favour of corporations and against small business. In favour of industrialized production against traditional craftmanship. And that is why the industries (this extends beyond food and pharmaceuticals to all kinds of industries, even banking) tend to dwell on any new regulations imposed just to happily help implementing and evangelizing them in the next moment. Asking for the cheap price – that part has to be blamed on the cosumer but the regulations? Yes, the consumer sometimes – mostly halfheartedly – asks for regulations because he is told they would help. Much in the same way as they are asking for capital punishment from time to time, believing it might cut the crime rate. But the beneficient of the regulations are the corporations, the regulatory bodys and the legions of auditors, consultants and other foks who make a living on senseless regulations! DNA testing for undeclared horse meat will be another regulatory measure that makes it yet harder for the local farmer to have their animal (grown locally and happily) slaughtered and bring the sausage to a local market for local folks … A real conspiracy theorist would say that this effect (new regulations) rather than the marinal savings resulting from the use of horse meat (instead of beef or pork) is the real motivation behind that fraud!
100% spot on.
price of anything is driven by demand, food, clothes…
I recently bought a cheap cottage pie (cos i couldn’t be arsed to cook one), tasted full of salt, and not a patch on a home made one.
I was under no illusion that it was 100% beef, or even what i would describe as meat.
You guys need to get your messages across to joe public, backed up by facts in a sustainable campaign.
if you need help in producing this, drop me an email.
When I was at uni, I have to admit, it was all about quantity for the cheapest possible price. This article is spot on. I didn’t care where it came from as long as it was cheap.
When I graduated and began to work in the food testing industry (ironically, the company I worked for, a long standing, British owned company made everyone redundant about a year ago to out source all of the testing- I bet they regret that move now!) But it wasn’t untill now that I realised how bad it was and started shopping at the local food market on my days off. I actually found that the butcher was cheaper.The quality was better and I could get bigger, better portions as well as different cuts of meat. I enjoy cooking so I could ask him which cut of meat was best for a new dish eg I had NO IDEA shin meat was ideal for stewing and it was really cheap. That level of knowledge, service and variety is just not possible from the supermarket.
The key to it all is education. I had no idea how bad it was before I worked in the industry. Education needs to start early on, at school and it needs to be pressed into memory. Before people reach an age where they are independant from their parents.
I completely agree about education! But how can you be educated enough when whole world screams for money? Just in the discussion of one single article so many problems arouse: animal abuse (or whatever it is called), falsification, media, knowledge, cooking from scratch, pricing, farm industry, supermarket industry, regulations, and all the rest… And then you take it alltogether and connect to what is taught at schools, which is considered to be of high importance that an educated person should be aware of (math, chemistry, physics, history (of the whole mankind and before), biology, religion, literature, arts, astronomy and whatever else) not forgetting about all the movies, crap(!) books and computer games that had been produced in enormous quantities for the past 10-20-30 years… I just wonder how can a child be possibly educated in such a manner that it can embrace all the knowledge (if it was absorbed) and bring it to the level of meaningful wellbeing for him/herself and others… Sometimes I think there’s too much information going around, which is certainly absolutely necessary, but at the same time is redundant and worthless… And, bringing up the nowadays world where you have to reach for the skies and become the most super intelligent and possess all the possible qualities that are needed to earn (more) money (or simply your living), i think it’s pretty much impossible to educate anyone… The only thing which would make it better is fairness… or people who would do their jobs well (and not be expected to be the best of the best) and who would be sincere about what they do and how they do it… and would be dedicated to their jobs… There are billions of people everywhere who want to have a happy life, but cannot have one due to either being uneducated enough or being lost in trying to be the best of the best ones…I do absolutely support the aricle above. However, it’s not to the fault of many people who just beleive what is written on the labels and want to have the lowest price possible for sustaining their families, but to the lies of producers, who want to become richer and richer…Unfortunately…
We have the chance to make this a better environment if we all pay attention to local food producers. Everyone thinks they don’t have time to find them and cook proper food. Well that’s just bollocks. We can all find time as its all around us. We all waste too much of it on stupid things. This is a wake up call for everyone. Well said and good luck with your campaign.
At my place of work my job is to make my colleagues and customers aware of issues in the technology industry and what’s important is not just doing this but how I do this. If my messages are not taken heed of IT IS MY FAULT. This article is aimed away from the person writing it. It seems like your awareness campaign failed and that IS YOUR FAULT.
Can you list the 73 regulations? All food sold within the EU as a whole has to comply with 852/2004, no matter where is comes from. I suspect the 73 regs are how the legislation is implemented within the UK, which tells me you are quite biased, or just no idea what you are writing about which is most likely, for example the closure of the local abattoirs was nothing to do with health and safety legislation. The fault here is criminal actions and outright fraud by people wanting to make more money. They can get away by this either by compliance by the regulatory authorities via bribes etc., or, as in this case, the idealogical cuts, forced upon us by an profit orientated government, so that regulation of food safety has effectively given a charter to those who wish to exploit the system for their own gain. The Food Safety system in this country is moving from a pro-active system, to a simply reactive system that cannot police the system, only try and cover the cracks. Leaving companies to monitor themselves does not work, look at the banking sector. I was saddened to hear the minister on the Food Programme on Radio 4 last Sunday claim the current situation was a victory for the FSA. The very same FSA who they have cut down in England and Wales.
The only issue here is that the product was labelled wrongly and possible animal medication has been ingested. So, let’s stop making a fuss throughout Europe and rectify the situation. If horsemeat is a cheaper meat, then let’s eat it, produced properly of course!! I’ve eaten many different meats other than what we deem acceptable in this country and nothing has bothered me thus far….including Findus Beef Lasagne!! If I had been informed that there was horsemeat contained in it, I would have bought it anyway. Now we’re funding a whole new employment bureaucracy……ready meal DNA testing!! I mean, let’s be totally honest, we don’t know what meats we’re eating from our local takeaways!! A British/European typical kneejerk reaction! This is purely my opinion, of course!
Bute, is also used as a painkiller in humans, to get the dose that is given as a medicine via an injection, you would have to eat about 4-500 1/2 pounders of 100% horseflesh in one day. And that is orally.
Bute is no longer used in humans because of the rare risk of aplastic anaemia. It has therefore also been removed from the food chain in the same way chloramphenicol was.
Well, the only point of anything these days is to create a bunch more cushy gov desk jobs.
I totally get your point, and agree local produce is far better, however, you’ve missed a few points, regardless of price there are parts of our community who can not get out, through illness, old age, housebound they no longer can get to local shops, and wether we like it or not the dynamics of family have change, and not for the better, so those people rely on supermarkets to deliver, or meals on wheels, the nursing homes that are funded by what little savings the elderly have will buy whatever they choose, schools, who albeit may want to keep the cost of dinner money down, still we are reliant on them to buy safely. I personally don’t think it comes down to the cost of the product, as horsemeat has been found in higher priced goods aswell, this was an opportunist who was cashing in on a few back handers because the legislation, strict checks are not in place, you could say buy from just within the UK, but the meat that’s contaminated was from the UK, and manufactured in the UK, so again it makes no difference, where there’s money to be made by Joe Bloggs selling a few slabes of meat out the back of a lorry, they will do it! Lets not take away from those who are guilty what is happening, the government will look to blame anyone else, and this is just helping them along. At the end of the day, if it says beef on the label it should be beef, wether that’s the bollocks and brains of a cow makes no difference, that’s what it should be, if people choose to still buy a high fat, low in protein product, that’s up to them, but regulations on behalf of consumers state that ingredients should be listed, it wasn’t. Lets not loose sight and shift blame, this is bigger than just buying local, this is unregulated food, and that’s what needs to change, include horsemeat as a agricultural animal rather than domestic and each animal should be tracked.. The passport system which is a total joke, be revised with hold numbers and animal registration, this will raise the cost of horsemeat and no longer will they be able to go in through the back door. where there is an open door it will be abused, close those doors and do the checks!
I am a disabled driver I can still do all my shoping at a super market,many mothers have to work for the family unit to survive and have little time for shoping.Population expoltion means we need to change what we eat and save fule (eg.ready meals mass cooked and micro waved) and eat more veg ect. strict lableing rules are a must ,with big fincial penalties.If we want to live longer and keep having the babies ,We have to compete when we sell our goods on the world market,before this scandle our our safely got horse meat from our registerd slaughter houses was a saleable item.?
a-bloody-men
I’ve banging this drum for years. well said.
Simply excellent
I agree to an extent but I must add one point my husband worked at our local abattoir doing the IT for them and the so called slaughter machines, which are more packing machines as the lads slaughter and cut up the Cows, sorry going off point! The point is not only does that abattoir supply 2 big chain supermarkets it also supplies local butchers, it is all British or Irish farmed beef, but some of it is stored/frozen for 2 years to meet demand, also all the off cuts are frozen into blocks, so you can see how easy it is to get a block of frozen horse meat into the system.
In the good old days meat was meat and even the cheap cuts were a treat for some! Every meal now has to consist of protein and who’s fault is that the governments for telling us we need this in our diet.
As for the consumers being at fault I don’t fully agree the owners of the supermarket would visit the abattoir and demand cheaper meat prices, the abattoir would then have to find cheaper suppliers to ensure they kept the contract and people kept their jobs, So if some company/bloke pops up with a cheaper alternative they’ll use it!
I’ve never bought or eaten any of the products that contain horse meat mainly due to be a nutritionist and just on the grounds that cheaper is never better especially when it comes to meat and poultry, I loathe the added sugar and salt in chicken breasts and I worry about the growth hormones added, I worry about the corn feed cows, (I try my hardest to buy grass feed beef whenever we eat it) antibiotics and again growth hormones used in UK Meat.
But the consumer only buys the cheapest offered to them by the supermarket as it means they can pay their bills or clothe their kids a little easier also they believe what they are buying is what it is labelled as!! if it was labelled horse I’m guessing most would pop it back in the freezer isle?!
As for fruit and veg I could go on all day, I am trying my hardest to grow as much as I can and teach my 3 yr old the same. You now have to eat 3 apples to get the nutrient level of 1 this is because the producers are not putting enough nutrients into the ground therefore nutrient rich food is becoming nutrient dense. The more nutrients in the ground the stronger the plant the less pesticides needed. It’s simple and if this was the case Organic wouldn’t need to exist we could just eat food.
The supermarkets will always want cheaper, the government will always back the supermarkets and brands and they will never subsidise local farmers and growers there’s just no profit in it for them. So it falls at our feet to make better choices, yes local isn’t cheap for everything so buy in season, reduce your protein intake the average uk adult eats twice their daily recommended amount as it is, grow a little even if it’s just a plant pot and taste the difference. Abattoirs should be allowed to sell their meat cuts straight to the public, people with fruit and veg vouchers should be able to use them at local farm shops. Schools should be made to set aside some play area as allotments to teach children about food and supply the kitchen I know this may just be my hippy way of thinking but teaching our children the basics of food will make for better choices.
Also there should be standards in place so the system can’t cheat or fail the public.
sorry to waffle!
N
totally agree with this reply sell straight to the public and allotments etc for children fab idea !
Thank you
Brilliant post! I have shared it on my facebook page, the irony of it all is that the very thign that pushed us into supermarkets is now probably going to send us in droves back to the local independant butcher – I do hope so!
I would add the point that it is pure laziness ont he part of the consumer that has lead ot this. If everyone prepared their own meals instead of buying huge quantities of “convenience foods”, there wouldn’t be this problem adn the nation would be much healthier for it. The number of obese people would reduce drastically and the health service wouldn’t be so over loaded.
The benefits of cooking your own meals are so numerous. Yes you have busy lives, our parents and their parent’s manged.
Stop whining and do something about it. Stop buying cheap JUNK FOOD!
Very true! Straight to the point!! There are no butchers near us now , which is such a shame! I always try to buy british whenever I can to support our farmers. Why don’t the government add a tax of a few pence on unhealthy foods and give the proceeds to our farmers to help with production and help keeps costs down that way? But thank u for a very thought provoking article, and we plan to visit our local farm shop this week, it will be nice for our little girl to see the animals too.
the government doesn’t put a tax on unhealthy foods, because it will simply show that the food is unhealthy… noone would buy it then and the government would lose all their profits from unhealthy food sales. as simple as that
More taxes! That’s a great idea but unfortunately down here on planet earth we’re having a slight cash flow problem what with our governments already mercilessly taxing the living daylights out of us.
Great article – thankfully in Helensburgh we’ve got several great butchers and have a good selection of properly butchered, good quality meat. When we’re feeling lazy, though, it’s just too easy to drop into a supermarket and buy a ready-made xxxxx, containing goodness knows what.
I wonder how much taxpayers’ money is now being spent on hastily convened meetings to determine how much meat testing is required, how labelling on packages should convey an impression of the contents of ready-made meals, how to improve traceability of food throughout Europe, who has benefitted from backhanders to look the other way and who to prosecute.
I also wonder what will happen to the carcases now that the market for horse meat for ready-meals has (hopefully) shrunk. Will this scandal impact directly on horse welfare or is this another pile of horse manure just lurking around the corner?
Interesting times.
Margaret
Just try #buybritish and try it for a few weeks, you might actually find it works
http://loddingtonestate.blogspot.co.uk/
John Harris in the Guardian has an excellent take on this:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/11/horsemeat-scandal-cheap-food-imperative?INTCMP=SRCH
He makes many of the same point as this blog post, with one important difference – its an unfortunate truth that cheap food had become a necessity to an awful lot of people who are battered by falling real wages and soaring accommodation costs. Much like the housing market, the situation shouldn’t have been allowed to get to this point – but now that it has you can’t just tell people to spend more on food, any more than you can tell homeowners to accept massive losses on their homes.
its a rum old situation.
I agree if that was the truth. We bought £10 worth of shin of beef for a stew today – from our butcher. It was enough to feed at least 8 with some mashed potato for example due to the fact there were a lot of veggies in there.I would say that unless you’re in extreme poverty and can’t afford most things, and are Mr Joe Average, it is far cheaper to make your own foods than buy pre-made foods full of crap!
Really excellent points!!!!
Just a couple of points- isn’t horse meat leaner than beef? And you have to eat 500 odd 100% horse burgers to get near the limit for humun consumption of a drug already used as a painkiller for people! I actually agree with the sentiment of shopping at butchers but everyone should the choice to shop how and where they like and the law should prevent fraudulant selling any where and you regulates the locate butcher or lets throw out health and safety and not care about, oh wait, healthy and safety. So all in all people should be free to shop where they like with all the correct infomation, so stop using a scandel for your own snobbish causes and ise actual facts in your writing, please. x
Talking of straightening facts: phenylbutazone is no longer approved for use in humans in the UK because of the risk of fatal aplastic anaemia. This is why we’ve also removed it from the food chain.
Agreed
Well said, horsemeat should b slightly more palatable than the usual rubbish in burgers, sausages etc but people usually don’t want to know, as long as it is cheap!! Never mind the animals welfare, they deserve care and respect before being slaughtered for our convenience.
Meat products are not actually more expensive from the local butcher, if you look they don’t shrink to the size of nothing when cooked, so actually go further! Have people not seen what is left in their grill pan after cooking cheap processed meats……..from the butcher the pan is virtually clean, no fat, no water and no scummy mess!!!
I don’t know what world you all live in, but the fact is that locally sourced food is more expensive to buy for the consumer than imported goods. People who run households will generally go for the cheapest option and buy inferior food poducts. As for the idea that people can somehow afford to make these changes or are even willing to do so shows how out of touch with reality the author is. Until somebody finds a way of making fresh foods cheaper than processed foods business will carry on as usual.
Well personally I live in a world where this particular household COOKS! if you make your own food then no, it’s not cheaper to buy crap!
Simply ! Thankyou! An add on tv would be effective. Maybe?
This condones my wish to cook fresh cooked meals.x and butcher meat.x
I think it’s more to do with the increased cost of houses/rent, bills and transport meaning that the only thing you can ensure you’re buying cheaper is food…not because people “don’t care”.
And re people affording meat goods etc. it is possible to make a little ‘expensive ‘meat go a lot further with good cooking and vegetables. My mother always has, I can , when I need too. People have got to used to cheap meats. Whether the real thing or not!
Your mother could because it wasn’t as bloody expensive back then!
As per a post earlier, we bought £10 of beef shin for a stew that will feed at least 8 due to home cooking! I agree with Janet Harris… people don’t know about cooking any more. We’re talking about buying a ready made Findus (amongst many) meal. They’re not as cheap as the beef stew we made today, with the meat from a local ethical butcher. People have become lazy! it’s been going on for years, it’s nothing to do with the current economic problems!
Thank you for being honest & brave enough to write this post. People say to me that they can’t afford organic, or local, or butchers meat. These same people afford haircuts, foreign holidays, new gadgets etc. It’s difficult not feel a sense of “what the f*** did you expect?!” Keep spreading the word!
Your saying then that poor people should have long shabby hair then?? You’re an idiot!!!
An idiot with a name at least
“Someone”.
I’m just saying that it’s about priorities and food should be a higher priority. That’s all.
I totally agree… priorities need to change and with a lot of people it’s not about money it’s about convenience. It’s been going on for years and it’s not because of the current climate! People say it’s ‘time’… or maybe people just don’t know how to flipping cook any more! All poor excuses unless you’re in abject poverty, then it’s understandable!
Bravo!
absolutley brilliant read, thank you for saying what needed to be said.
There’s plenty of other people irritated about this scandal, but irritated thats its a scandal at all. Consumers are paying low prices for products, and can’t even tell they have horse meat in – so really, once we get past the psychology of it, why does it matter at all?
Its lovely to eat proper, quality meat when we can. But when we need supermarket convenience, we want our products to be cheap and tasty. Beyond that, who cares?
To stop caring is the road to hell and no turning back.
Toss
I went to private school, had a pony, went hunting, grew up in the countryside an yet I struggle each and ever week to find enough money to feed a family of three. What planet are you on? Of course we will pick a cheap chicken when the alternative is no chicken for a roast dinner. And I still eek out three meals from the leftovers of that because I have no choice not to eat the tasteless rank bird. I would LOVE to be able to shop at my local butchers, LOVE to eat organic, LOVE to shop locally instead of buying every single item as Sainsbury’s basics for £40 a week. Live in cloud cuckco why don’t you and blame the poor people instead of blaming the real culprits…the various governments who plunder and blunder their way along making one cock up after another while joe bloggs pays the price….yet again!
How incredibly preachy, self-righteous and utterly naive to blame Joe Moron Public for this. Would you blame Joe Moron Public for taking sub prime mortgages as well, rather than the banks who offered them? Astoundingly simplistic and frankly idiotic logic.
Societies are run, and progress, based on pyramid-like hierarchical structures. The masses at the bottom take what is given to them. To claim that trends and patterns are driven the other way around is foolish and inaccurate, and in all likelihood snobbish, elitist sneering at the Lowest Common Denominator who ‘should know better’.
If you want to howl and rail against wrongs – and the article is right in identifying the problems with food supply – pick the right flippin’ targets.
Exactly right!
While it has some ring of truth, many people can’t afford to pay more for their meat..so they chose the cheap stuff or nothing at all.
Many people want to buy food that’s produced locally, but despite living in one of the most agriculture rich counties in the UK the farm shops rip us of more than supermarkets for meat..even when there are considerably less costs involved.
So for someone to lecture me about it being my fault for not earning enough, or living in a place where farmers don’t bother to make things easier by selling direct to the public is simply not fair.
Reblogged this on Kingdom of Appetency and commented:
I wonder if this story has broken in America like it has here in Britain, but this article highlights exactly what KofA would say on the matter (if I’d written a post about it ….)
theres been no coverage in the us/canada. But why would there be unless it was a really slow newsday? I mean, crappy former eastern blok countries are breaking rules and scamming people. How is that anything other than business as usual?
Techinically correct, but there are a lot of poorly paid people who have to buy cheap food and cant afford, organic produce and cant afford to buy fresh food every day, also many people dont have the time to visit the local farm shop as they have to work , most hours of the day for minimum wage, and who ever said that these people spend their money of expensive holidays etc etc, thats just not true, and an assumption you’ve made from a few examples you have had.
While I agree – I find your tone disgustingly insulting. The people you are actually needing to get this message over to are the sort of people you are talking at here as if they are dirt on the bottom of your shoe.
And as Tim posted while I was typing my reply, many of us can not get to the places you mention. My local butchers is shut when I walk past on my way home from work. My work has an adequate fridge for us to keep lunches in but not for me to take up with any lunchtime purchases. I can not afford to run a car to get out to places that are open on a Saturday afternoon (my local butchers close by the time I finish work on Saturday morning). My only option is the cheapest supermarket cuts.
Trust no-one. Not the big supermarket, the corner shop nor the farm shop. When money is the only driving factor abuse is certain
Very well put. like it. now lets all make this change and eat British
Dear Author,
We’re it not for your self-righteous, accusatory tone I’m sure your points would stand a little taller. It really just blunts the edge of all the good points you made that you felt the need to make them in such an aggressive & patronising manner. All that’s missing is it all being in capitals to complete the effect.
I’m a chef – I only buy seasonal, British and fresh and I don’t eat frozen food. All these things I do for the reasons you stated. I don’t, however, feel the need to yell at people about how stupid they are from the smug comfort of a moral high horse.
Awesome!
Yes – the customer is to blame but also the law.
Fact is – if we went into the supermarket and paid twice as much the scandal would still have happend. The supermarkets didn’t choose”not to look ” too hard becasue they had to but becasue cheaper suppy means more profit no matter how much profit they are already making..
It’s not hypocrisy for most people: most are simply too busy and TRUST supermarkets to source food ethically just as we have to trust doctors to treat us, mechanics to service our cars and politicians not to fiddle expenses.
An uncomfortable truth, very well told. I think the few defensive/aggressive comments are the natural reaction of some people who kick out when forced to hold a mirror up to themselves (and I say that as someone who has often bought ‘value’ supermarket meat products). Cooking a meal with quality meat, that lasts several meals, will always be cheaper than individual ready meals. It’s a question of priorities and sometimes we need reminding. Thanks
Brilliantly written and so very true.
I completely agree with all said in this article
However that’s exactly what the majority want. The best price and a half decent meat. If the 2 don’t go together we still don’t expect to be lied to. My concern as many others is not to eat the best quality, because of its price. Il happily eat the low quality as long as its passed the health tests. Stop being snobs about quality of meat. Live to your means, if you can justify and afford it, fair enough. If not then eat cheap meat that says what it is. Yes we control what goes in our mouths but the laws need to be there aswell.
I personally don’t buy meats fron asda or tesco, if i want good meat i go to morrison & buy british stuff. its cheaper than tesco & asda plus its better quality. i do buy cheap stuff from iceland but i know its cheap for a reason. As for the milk our local tesco did do milk from local farms & i bought that but it soon stopped.
Dear Author & everyone else not going giddy up!
Thank you for taking the time to write this. You are not alone at highlighting the narcissistic lifestyle of the average consumer. Were you called “conspiracy nuts” and a Fringe element of society?
Today for the moment, people are quite rightly outraged at this.
I wonder what they will say if they find out how dangerous the processed foods they are consuming are, the poisons like aspartame that are being linked to cancers, diabetes, and a plethora of other diseases.
How about the puss, hormones, antibiotics in their milk. Yummy. What about the GMO’s & soya adulterated crops & food stuff.
What about fast food, using wood cellulose as a filler.
As you quite rightly pointed out this can all be attributed by money, cost saving, it’s down to the manipulation of hyper inflation. Hide the fact that we have been for many years trying to admit we have too much money in circulation due to debt. We borrow money to feed ourselves with low grade / poor quality, nutrient deficient food.
I wish everyone would put down their sun newspapers, switch off murdoch brain bleach tv, unplug BBC pro EU & UN propaganda and download a copy of the United nations Agenda 21 resolution.
There in that 600 odd page document is a time line, one that encompasses the way we are being coerced into this current zombie like lifestyle. This is not a lefty or righty conspiracy, as all political parties & countries have signed up to it’s full adherence and implementation.
http://www.green-agenda.com/agenda21.html
Only by destroying local industry, farming, communities etc, can the total reliance on centralized living be fully accomplished. Once we are fully dependent on the state will be give up everything for them to save us from ourselves.
Oh, and if you want to see some hindsight in action, re-read the author’s blog again, then read agenda 21, You never know you may for once in your life connect some dots.
Good luck though, where we go from here is unknown. Personally, I grow as much organic food as I can fit into my raised beds, pots & containers. When I do buy food it’s organic or good local quality. That’s my form of rebellion against the system. Oh I don’t support the debt paradigm either, i cut up my cards along with my must have latest narcissistic gadget a couple of years ago when I saw all this plus much coming,
Life is both rewarding and difficult when you try to warn people, however once they get past the denial stage, and through the shock and fear stages, they can start to take control of their lives again. viva humanity.
I’m still slightly confused by the organic label. It’s an almost meaningless marketing concept designed to offer a more desirable product and allow it to be more expensive. Seriously if you read the organic literature it’s strange, apart from some obvious things like not using slaves, not using GM (debatable), not using weed killers without good reason (whut? so the farmers are spraying expensive weed killers without sick crops?), I just don’t see the point.
Very well written, thought provoking…. Think it is about time for me to go vegetarian… Any one going to join me?
Good luck with that Sandra, vegan would be even better!
So there’s no cruelty in British farming or slaughterhouses? The main outrcy is that people have suddenly been reminded that the meat they eat comes from the death of an animal. Most city and town dwellers will see horses, few will get close to sheep, pigs or cattle and can then turn a blind eye to what their meat actually is.
If you want sustainability then a meat eating diet is not the ecologically sound answer, except on a very limited basis.
The only sustainable meat diet is human flesh, at least then you know you are helping the planet. But they dont test for that so maybe you already are………
Excellent article that makes the point really well – it’s just a shame that the majority don’t have any interest in where their grub comes from as long as it’s cheap. Maybe, just maybe, the horse meat thing will open a few eyes but I suspect not enough to make a difference…
Feel incredibly lucky as have a very good farm shop selling meat from local farms nearby. It is more expensive then a supermarket but we’d rather eat a little less to negate this plus it tastes fantastic. I haven’t bought processed foods for some time as genuinely enjoy cooking. making own burgers, spaghetti bol etc. I can understand people liking the convenience of ready meals but can’t understand it as to be honest they taste lousy! ( have eaten them in the past).
If you want to know where your food comes from use a local butcher. There are cheap cuts available but as consumers we have lost the skills of selecting and cooking these cuts.
Your butcher will help.
As for veg we grow our own as we are lucky enough to be able to do so
This is not about food snobbery. It’s about keeping costs down but still trying to eat good food.
I’d like to point out the I work full time and have little time to shop during the week. I also don’t earn a lot of money.
I pad meals out with homegrown vegetables (or seasonable ones from a local supplier as they are cheaper)
What really put me off ready meals a good few years a go was my boyfriend reading the ingredients of a low fat ready meal I had in the fridge and then showing me the back of a bag of wall paper paste. Horribly enough there was an ingredient in common. Vom!!!!
That’s brilliant. A fantastic piece of writing
What a load of shite
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Having shared this on facebook, I had one friend suggest it was a matter of cost. So I priced up a lasagne made from scratch for 6 people using beef mince from my local butcher, and not skimping on ingredients (I even bunged in mushrooms, a courgette and a red pepper to help bulk it out, and didn’t use Tesco “value” anything).
The cost comes to £1.56 per portion to feed 6 people, though I’d argue that you might realistically stretch it to 8 including kids with the simple addition of some garlic bread – then the cost drops to £1.29 per portion.
A single portion of Findus Beef Lasagne comes in at £1.60
and as far as I’m concerned, there the argument ends. There is NO excuse for people to need to buy these ready meals, no excuse for them not to buy good quality ingredients and make things themselves. Cost is not a factor, it’s just sheer laziness and apathy.
So that makes it the consumers fault that there’s horsemeat in a product labelled as beef?
not at all, as the blog post at the top pointed out, that’s fraudulent labelling that needs to be punished by the full force of the law. It does however, go some way to proving that good food does not mean expensive, and that it’s quite possible to match these ready meals on price while comfortably beating them for quality (and imho taste) at the same time.
Apples and oranges: you buy in bulk and assemble it yourself, to save 4p per portion in a batch of six versus buying individually. A Tesco lasagne for four is £1.50 per portion – the ‘Tesco Everyday Value’ version is just under half that, £2.98 to serve four. (Moreover, buy even the Findus lasagne you used for comparison with the right card and you get 4.8p of that back in addition to Clubcard points, making it cheaper than your option as well.)
So yes, the Tesco ready-made food IS indeed very much cheaper than your home-made alternative. Yours may well taste better – but at more than twice the price, it would have to – and even then, there are plenty of us with no capacity for that indulgence. For that matter, if they offered a genuine horsemeat lasagne – probably at a lower price still – I’d probably be happy to eat that, as long as the meat met the relevant safety standards: there is nothing inherently wrong with horse meat.
The article’s smug “let them eat filet mignon” is really rather grating – and your figures, amounting to “hey, it’s only just over twice the price, plus lots of extra time and effort” once corrected, don’t help much. Competing on quality would be one thing, but the article seems to rely more on snobbery and xenophobia!
I wasn’t really trying to “save” 4p, but rather show that the price was comparable. I’m not sure making 6 at once really constitutes “bulk buying”. Do you honestly live such a hand to mouth existence that you can only ever buy a single ready meal at a time? And if you do, then how on earth can you afford the electricity to run a microwave, or pay for access to the internet?
I won’t argue your point re Tesco Very Day Value – I can’t match that using the ingredients I did. If that’s your only option on an every day basis, then good luck to you.
(Actually a reply to a later reply, but threading won’t allow that)
“I wasn’t really trying to “save” 4p, but rather show that the price was comparable.”
You were trying to discredit the cost savings from supermarkets – I was pointing out your route actually costs more than twice as much as the cheap Tesco one, a long way from being comparable.
“I’m not sure making 6 at once really constitutes “bulk buying”. Do you honestly live such a hand to mouth existence that you can only ever buy a single ready meal at a time?”
No, I’m single and thus have very little use for six portions at a time: the target market for the individual portion you quoted a price for. Comparing a price-per-portion for a six serving meal with the price of an individual retail portion seemed unfair, which is why I called you on it: you should have used a family size product for a fair match, which is why I posted those prices.
“I won’t argue your point re Tesco Very Day Value – I can’t match that using the ingredients I did. If that’s your only option on an every day basis, then good luck to you.”
You seemed to be trying to argue cost wasn’t a valid reason for eating supermarket food – now you seem to concede it’s actually about half the price, which for those under cost pressure is what makes the difference.
errr, freezing? We home make and make lots of everything. We eat what there is for two meals but the rest is frozen and re-used later! Being single is not an excuse for not home cooking!
Fantastic article, I’m in agreement with your comments. No-one likes ‘I told you so ‘ stories hence some of the negative feedback. And yes there are offences being carried out by the suppliers. But you still wanted cheap meat, and you got it. He told you so!
Customers don’t dictate prices, content, rearing methods or anything else. The real reason for this horse meat situation is cut-throat competition between meat manufacturers/suppliers and ‘they’ are the ones who made the decision to sell something that wasn’t what it was claimed to be. The customers had no part in that. The author of the article is talking rubbish (in my opinion. )
Indeedy. And in a really aggressive nasty way that is going to persuade no-one. Suffice to say that those who already agree will think “yeah we told them so” like everyone who doesn’t jump on the author’s bandwagon is one of the thick people he holds in such contempt, and those who started reading with an open mind will think “wow, what an overbearing tit”.
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Always bought British meats and shop at a farm shop my parents shopped at when I was a kid for veg and eggs. I was bought up to cook real meals none of this fast food crap, I’m also bringing my kids up the same way. With any luck the farm shop will still be trading for my grandkid’s to shop at too.
Want to make sure you get value for money, fresh produce and the feel good factor of helping you local farmers.. then buy british and shop at your local (or in my case not so local) farm shop.. well worth it.
This article seems like it is full of a LOT of heresay. H&S regs? They are there for a reason! Not too hard to comply…. Regulations which come from abroad yet only apply to us?
Seems like this person has subscribed to the UKIP ideology.
I do however agree that we should be looking more local for our foodstuffs. For one thing it hasn’t traveled miles and secondly, it DOES taste better. We have good lush grass and caring farmers here which leads to a fantastic product.
The reason everything comes from china now is they dont have h&s regs, or enviro regs or labour regs to follow and can save a lot of $$. Thats why your dvd player isnt made in Basildon. The same with this eastern europe meat, its cheaper to produce where they have less regulation and ship hundreds of miles than it is to buy it from within the UK.
The *moment* ANY of my local co-ops or markets make themselves accessible, I will shop there. Until then I am stuck – I can physically get into supermarkets, I can’t physically get into so-called ethical shops. So ethical they don’t want disabled customers presumably. I would shop there in an instant if I could. So far, and I hate it, it’s only the massive supermarket chains who have obeyed the law. So that’s that.
I don’t like the self-righteous tone of this post, and I think it’s wrong to frame this as a moral issue in the first place. Food production and distribution in the UK is highly regulated, as well as being controlled. If you buy a product clearly you are entitled to believe that it contains what it says on the label. Equally clearly, you are NOT entitled to SELL a product that you know is not what it says on the label.
People have the choice to buy from local butchers if they can afford it. But farmers also have the choice to refuse selling at cut-throat prices to supermarkets, if they can afford it.
Never take food from strangers.
With all of the comments submitted there is obviously a lot of controversy but, cutting all of the chaff aside, and there is so much chaff it’s mixed the argument up. This comment puts it all into perspective. Thank you (One of the many) anonymous….your statement hit’s the nail. Know your source! Keep the comments and thoughts going….for our future.
I agree with u
x
Given that in the UK during 2012 65.4% of groceries were sold through supermarkets. Some farmers who produce livestock do deal directly with supermarkets; but often the price fluctuates like a commodity depending on supply and demand. For farmers to refuse to sell to 65.4% of their target market is just an ill-informed and ridiculous statement
2 tell u the thruth am not angry nothing changes. We should support r local farmers at least u know where its coming from. The reason people do have cheep stuff is they cnt affort anything else its a circle people cnt afford 2 live and eat the food they should eat so the farmers dnt get paid enuff 2 live and have 2 sell there food cheep why we buy from abroad when we have good meat here it sucks. We rnt 2 blame the so call goverment r the rich get richer poor get poorer. Xx
Well said! Hopefully now things will change. Butchers in my local area are already reporting a massive increase in customers over the past few weeks, so lets hope it continues!
As fas as i know the quality od british milk is really v v bad! Meat the same….. Tuberculosis in All country! Thank you I do not buy..
I agree we live in a world that demands cheap prices but we forget about quality and value. Everything is a commodity these days and the supermarkets drive the price wars. I could make lasagne cheaper than them if I made it out of cardboard! No one stops to question quality. Meat should be a treat. We clearly don’t NEED to eat meat to live as the millions o living vegetarians in the world prove. But if you like meat and want to eat it choose wisely. A butcher, particularly a farm shop will know exactly where the meat has come from.. Often their own stock. Yes it comes at a price and not everyone will be able to afford it regularly… But why should they? If you want luxuries you have to work hard for them… And eating meat should be a luxury. It was a living animal and should have been treated well and looked after… This all comes at a price. Worryingly the NHS is going the same way as the supermarkets… Driving prices lower, finding cheaper ways of doing things and you only have to read the Francis report to see what that leads to! A consumers/patients we should demand quality at a fair price… If we pay crap money… We will get crap goods.
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Its not really the point that Horse meat is in our food. The point is that its sold as Beef which is wrong on so many levels.
Each and every one of us at some point has to trust the word of someone else. That’s a simple fact of life.
The next time the poster has a catastrophic brake failure of suffer from Carbon monoxide poisoning due to trusting the word of the garage or gas fitter then he can rest in peace in the knowledge that it’s his own fault.
Many great point. Sadly CA also need to also take the blame in that they diluted the message through their dedication to shouting-off about blood sports rather than the collapse of British farming.
I’m a fulltime student and my husband earns barely minimum wage, we are hardly over the poverty line, yet I still shop at my local butcher. Yes he’s more expensive but I know where its from and it tastes so much better (actually tastes of something!)
A leg of lamb cost maybe £20 but does us at least 3 dinners, and a couple of lunches!
I can cook as I don’t watch the telly and complain I don’t have any time.
People need to understand that everything has a cost, be in money, time or effort, and we should expect to pay an appropriate recompense to farmers for their work – people expect to be paid for their time, so why not farmers?!
I have to say as much as I know people who do cut corners, cannot be bothered to cook a home cooked meal and prefer to just get a ready meal etc, I am not one of them but I would be classed as one of those people who are looking for the best deal! My family are on a very low income and we have 3 children to feed cloth etc therefore making the money I have available for shopping each week go far enough to feed my family with health nutritious home cooked meals is becoming harder and harder. I am one of the people that has no option but to go for the cheaper cuts otherwise I cannot afford everything we need as a family. We do not go out/have takeaways often (usually only really when someone else pays!) and we are not extravagant in any way. Most of my children’s clothes are second hand and all of mine and my husband’s are second hand. It is not fair to say people should support local producers when not everyone can afford to – I would love to get local produce and when I had extra income I did but prices of everyday living have increased too much recently to allow people on a lower income to have this luxury!
Well all you smug veggies … I doubt that all your veggie food contains NO meat/animal products either!
… Here’s why – I have a 3yr old who has a dairy & soya allergy (as identified by the hospital – not a “fad”!) … some of the products that I buy for her state in their ingredients NO SOYA or DAIRY yet she has the same bad reaction – varying with different products.
So, if meat is wrongly labelled due to fraud do you REALLY think that all veggie/vegan food (including bread, spreads, pestcides used) is what YOU think it is? … Oh, pleeease don’t tell me you lovingly tend EVERY veg & grain that passes your lips ‘cos I don’t believe you!
… And for all those now deciding it’s the job of teachers (why wouldn’t it be? … EVERYTHING is always our fault!) to teach cooking/nutrition … most primary schools ARE already signed up to a cooking scheme for their children … but hey, why bother to get your facts right where schools are concerned?!
So what Michael Brown is saying here that Feed suppliers sold farmers crap and dangerous products to meet the demand of farmers seeking lower priced products so it was not the fault of the Feed suppliers, it was the farmers fault for being cheap skates when it comes to what they are willing to pay for animal feed, if they had been willing to pay a little bit more for a better quality product the problem would not have occurred.
I dunno but isn’t that what they are accusing all consumers of doing ?
Or is he saying that if your willing to buy cheap products and demand cheap products you have to be willing to accept substandard and dangerous practices to get those prices down and that BSE, Foot and Mouth and anything else that happens is your own faults, farmers are justified in selling us anything to give us what we want.
Farmers it appears are forced by public demand to take risks with our lives, if they don’t do it someone else will so your health is not important providing they keep their jobs.
Why don’t farmers sell horsemeat for consumption labelled as horsemeat, I like it and many others do, the French and Swiss love it. What has this got to do with farmers ? unless those farmers commenting are selling horsemeat labelled as beef, as far as I was aware it was not farmers doing that it was criminals.
Personally I think farmers are being hit the most by this scam, how can they hope to sell their beef for a fair price when others are selling cheaper horsemeat as beef. We may be outraged at being conned over what we are buying but their businesses are in even greater jeapordy than they were before with this relevation.
Give me a cheap horse burger anyday!
Is the reduction in fat levels of food also an issue. Consumers are constantly looking low fat options and the supermarkets have responded to this with lighter of low fat variations of the products. Horse meat may be an easy way to reduce the fat content of a ready meal. Horse meat is in fact only 6% fat in comparison to beef which is 13% fat.
Brilliant bit of writing. Like my pa has always said “you get what you pay for”
I’m completely saddened by the fact that the easy thing for the supermarkets to do is just source all of their goods from this country. We have our own meat, veg, fruit and indeed our own water! So why do we have bottles of Evian and the like, we eat New Zeland lamb and we get our steaks from the States? I realise that’s for the posher shopper (or wiser one indeed) but come on.. I’m wise. Scottish water, Angus beef and well.. I don’t eat lamb in the first place!!!
In all honesty it’s not really the fault of the British public at all however. When you’re heading back and forward to work all the time and it works out just as expensive to make your own, you’ll buy a bunch of microwave bolognese and lasagne to keep you going because after all, you’re gonna make it and fridge or freeze it then bump it in the microwave.
It is the shops who have been wrongly labelling their food. It is the government who have stamped down on our own produce but never brought in any rules for traders from abroad. And why? Well.. why not? If they can keep trading with the rest of the world it keeps our special credit rating nice and high and means that we can appear to be a pretty rich quadrant of nations.
At the end of the day, Britain has to realise that it’s time to use our own goods and stop trying to keep the rest of the world happy. We could be completely independant with our own produce and goods.. obviously there are products people want from abroad, like bananas, bourbon, vodka and the like.. but for the rest of the goods if it’s something we have here, why not make THAT the cheaper product.. since it’s hardly expensive to import when it’s already in the country.
Sorry but the economics of it will never make any sense to me
I agree with you here on Britain needing to source more of its own food (except the New Zealand lamb part. A lot of lamb used to come from Cumbria, but after the Chernobyl disaster, sheep became irradiated. Not even kidding.)
Coming from a rural area and absolutely swamped in farming communities around me pretty much my whole life, I do agree that it is partially the consumer’s fault for this sticky mess – and I’m not out of that equation; after moving to a city to study, I have fallen prey to cheap meat in the past (normally in canned form…oops). Being around farmers makes you realise how much pressure they are under. Talking to several people last year after the cheap milk fiasco in supermarkets; so many were really facing trouble as they of course weren’t receiving as much from the supermarkets for their produce. And farming is bloody expensive.
I don’t agree that ‘it’s just as expensive to make your own’. It may seem that way initially, as you will be buying in bulk, but you get so much more out of your food that way, and it does work out cheaper in the long run! Fortunately, along with teaching me the good practice of checking my meat before buying it. See where it’s from, judge the quality by the colour etc, my parents also taught me how to get the most from what I have. These lessons in making do are something I cherish, as so many people my age (22) seem to not have them. The problem with a lot of people today is that everyone wants as much as possible as cheap as possible without compromising on quality. And you have to compromise somewhere there.
Something I was going to add to your comment: we get tons of food shipped over from other countries, but the thing that really grinds my gears is the number of bloody Starbucks and McDonalds and now, God help us, Krispy Kremes over here. Totally unnecessary. Bah.
Brilliant article so very true,
Surprised to see hardly anyone laying any blame at the supermarkets’ doors. Prices are going up, farmers are getting less, and yet supermarkets are raking it in.
Anonymous, thank you for your tireless efforts at attempting to educate and help others. I’ve read the china study and many more. I am now a Vegan and use my consumer power carefully. Ignorance is bliss. Once you discover alot of difficult truths about our mass food production, the well established links of so many pathologies and unethical profitable methods, you can never forget. It makes it particularly difficult for me working in healthcare, knowing that we ignore the food industry while they ignore us, with both profiting from our ignorance.
Written by someone who obviously CAN afford to eat properly. Unlike most of us and no it’s not a ‘tiny’ majority but a ‘large’ majority.
Great article, I agree, I’ve lived on very little money, I’d rather buy less clothes/technology/cleaning products than buy cheap food. I eat a lot of vegetables, mostly seasonal, preferably local, sometimes organic, I eat pulses (cheap, ..not local!), home grown veg and meat as a treat, always local often organic. I very rarely shop in supermarkets, and I think it’s funny/sad that people care so much that it’s horse meat not cow meat, but don’t seem to give a damn what other chemicals and crap is in their food. I also work on a farm, have reared and eaten my own animals and have worked in an abattoir. Life is grim at time for those animals, regardless of any amount of legal protection, and death is nothing short of completely horrific. Anyone who eats meat should be made to look into an animals eyes (preferably one they have reared from birth) and kill it, then gut/skin/butcher it. Still want cheap meat? Yes, you’re right, people give away their power by blaming everyone else, the government, the supermarkets. Sorry but no it’s every individuals fault for choosing to support the supermarkets, use you purchasing power, don’t give it away to the cheapest bidder, sorry must go, bread’s about to burn…
Bloody Brilliant – exactly what I’ve been saying but much more eloquently. Yes Tesco (or whoever) lied and that’s dreadful and will no doubt be punished. But they could only lie to people who shopped there – and moreover – bought the cheapest of the cheap.
I only buy local organic meat, direct from the farm – and no that doesn’t mean I’m rich. I’m a single, stay at home mother, running a very small home-business and we scrimp and save on everything, the house is rarely heated. But the reality of supermarkets is the food is not healthy and they end up killing farmer’s livelihoods (and often farmers).
So yes – it is YOUR fault.
It had to be said.
I don;t know where those leaving comments about the life of the UK farmers get their opinions from: it is not a life of a 9-5 job 5 days a week with 5 weeks paid leave a year, it is a 7 day a week lifetime commitment with an odd day off here and there, a rare weekend or two through the year and hopefully a week with the family between lambing/calving/sowing/silage/haymaking/harvest/sowing/winter housing and feeding maintenance of buildings, fences and machinery have to be fitted in. 8am-6pm will be a short day for most 7 days a week.. 4X4s are driven out of necessity, they are a work horse not a vehicle of status. It is a good life if you choose to make the most of it but it is not easy and the rewards are not financial.
If those that think they are on a tight budget would like to calculate the typical hill farmers’ income and then complain about their lot it’s a worthy exercise.
What happened to the days of buying a good quality piece of meat on a Sunday, using the leftovers for a meal on Monday and possibly Tuesday and boiling the bones to make soup for the week? It still happens on many farms where budgeting but the use of good food continues. Careful planning and a little effort will make your money go much further when you buy quality meat from a butcher. Your local butcher will have seen the animals on the farm in many cases, know the farmer, the abbatoir and the customers, make recommendations on how to make the most of all the cuts of meat
How can meat that has travelled across half of Europe, left profit for many companies and be “cheap” in the supermarket possibly be the same product that is purchased from a local company with local suppliers: fewer miles, less processing, fewer wages to cover. A little thought about the food chain tells you the cost of these “value” and also not-so “value” meals cannot add up. British meat may appear expensive but the consumer demanded traceability, welfare standards and quality all of which have to be monitored and therefore cost – and then the consumer chooses to buy cheap.
When food was priced correctly famillies didn’t run two cars, have a foreign holiday every year, multiple TVs, buy their lunch everyday at work, replaced their furnishings when they were bored, have every electrical must have gadget: people spent most of their money on their food and housing, things got repaired, a holiday was a luxury, the family gathered around the TV, Christmas and Birthdays were special because a new toy/new clothing was something special and exciting, family was important and people knew the true meaning of budgeting. What we buy with our hard earned cash is our choice – we have to take responsibility for how we make our choices.
You start your comment condoning others for assuming they know the life of a farmer and end lecturing families based on your assumptions on how they live their lives even down to their spending habits. Please tell us again how we’re wrong to judge and make assumptions?!
*condemning, not condoning.
* condemning, not condoning. Stupid autocorrect.
darn good reply
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why don’t they start selling these cheap meats legally?
if people have liked the burgers, then give them the chance to cotinue buying them (with correct labelling).
and vegetarians,, i wonder what’s in those quorn style foods? ask for it to be tested aswell. better safe than sorry.
An excellent and very well written article. I suppose the absurdity of the current market situation us the proliferation of ‘cheap meat’ has actually increased the price of quality meat through lack of demand / lack of economies of scale. I’m just hoping that this situation will provide some sort of catalyst for change…
Fantastic we written. I could not see a future in the uk in ag so moved to oz to be in an amazing ag sector. They won’t listen mate let them starve an go thirsty an farmers supply there OWN then see how people don’t listen. And the bse we had all the quarantine rules then u drive down the motorway an the livestock trucks still carting for the abs with crap an piss going all over the road an cars was a bloody joke. Keep it up mate on day maybe
Whilst I agree with this I am a mother of 2 young hungry boys and a hungry husband and I am now spending almost £200 a week on our food shop because I commit to making everything from scratch, organic, free range and as local as poss. It is very difficult to do this now on a budget and I’ve watched all these prices creep up year on year. Soon we will not be able to afford to eat like this which terrifies me as I want the best for my kids. I used to argue the same that eating fresh home cooked food was cheaper but it so isn’t. I can see how people in a worse off position than myself turn to the cheaper supermarket options, it is the supermarkets fault that a pack of pears costs twice as much as a multipack of crisps!
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I actually quite like horse – of course I’m not talking about Black Caviar but some horses have been bred specifically for eating (hmmm – brand name opportunity?)
In fact, it seems the market may have found a rather neat solution to both the low cost consumer demands and the world food shortage.
Excepting the possibility of drug contamination, it is apparent that there’s a surplus of available horse meat out there. Healthy, tasty, cheap… but culturally unaccepted.
What’s better? To pay more for a well bred cow, or to open your mind a little and accept the horse meat?
Of course it should be correctly labelled and must be checked as safe for consumption, but then make your choice. I’ll stick to my tofu thanks.
THANK YOU! Mirrors my opinion. Vote with your wallet, and give a shit.
Great tip there at the end eat as much as you want as long as you read the label first makes sense thanks for sharing.
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You say we didn’t care, I still don’t.
Am excellent article. Very well said and yes, we too have been banging that drum for a long time!
Let’s hope things start to change…..
Great points, very well written and argued.
Take it your a farmer then? Or friend/family is a farmer? Or a vegetarian maybe? Tell me where I can get turkey for 60p! Or beef burgers for 90p? Your full of S&@t! Farmers make out they are hard done by but yet can still drive round in £40,000 range rovers, what a load if bollox.
“Tell me where I can get turkey for 60p! Or beef burgers for 90p?”
erm… Aldi?
http://www.aldi.co.uk/
And if anyone needs a Range Rover, Land Rover/whatever it’s a farmer surely?
I am sorry but the article is nonsense. It is pathetic to blame consumers. You may as well say that the consumer is at fault for EVERY dodgy thing happening in ANY industry because if they didn’t buy the end product the supplier wouldn’t have been tempted to get away with its illegal activities. It is a hopeless argument. The author is missing one fundamental point – it is ILLEGAL to market a product saying it is one thing when it is actually something else.
People and families live very busy lives, but they are now also supposed to have the time and motivation to go behind food labelling to see if it is what it says it is??? And just how are they supposed to so that?? And why stop at beef – what about every other type of food? Of course it is practically impossible for anyone to do that. That’s why there are relevant laws and agencies in place to provide protection to consumers.
Also, I do not buy in to this rubbish that if we bought local produce from the local butcher and paid a bit more then we would be fine and we know what we would be getting. Have you any idea how many chemicals are routinely pumped into animals by farmers these days? I suggest you read ‘Skinny Bitch’ by Freedman and Barnouin. It is a superb expose of the food industry – passing horsemeat off as beef is absolutely the tip of the iceberg,
NO NO NO…. This article is really stupid. We (the consumer) asked for cheaper food, we expected this to come at the compromise of the fatcat supermarkets profit margin not the quality or more importantly the animal the meat comes from. The farmers could also drop their margin too (despite their hard done to complaining) and still produce quality. Everyone just got familiar making too much money and instead of letting this go lied and produced crap for their paying customers. You should be ashamed, we just want a good fair price and the animal we pay for!
Your message may have an element of truth, but you’ll need to tone down the vomit inducing self-righteousness to expect anyone to get to the end. Cringeworthy stuff.
Hard to stomach but oh so true – and even more reason to buy organic where animal welfare is guaranteed. Think your next blog should be about the probable-but-unpalatable link between banning fox hunting, the amount of nasty cheap food in cities and the rise of urban fox attacks. That would set the cat amongst the pigeons, if they haven’t already been caught, battered and sold off as fried chicken!
Whilst I share the sentiments of the article it’s not the farmers who have caused the problem. Regrettably it is the retailers.
Without wanting to sound posh or upper class, I work as a professional so I have money to spend on quality food. I love the products that my local butcher (and greengrocer) sells. I like the way I get exactly the portion I am looking for. I like the quality (infact supermarket mince is so bad I have actually started using Quorn mince as it is more consistent).
However, my local butcher – whilst he probably works more hours than me each week, his shop is open fewer hours. Thus, I can never actually go in to buy his products. It pretty much gives me Saturday morning (as everything is sold out by the afternoon since they’re not open Sunday). This is the only day of the week I get to lay in.
The reality is that although the idealistic stay at home wife who shops for fresh produce in the local town is a nice thought, it no longer happens. Infact, the last few decades have seen laws introduced to stop that kind of stereotypical thinking.
Tesco and its competitors have pioneered ways to make my life easier – free parking, opening hours that don’t clash with *standard* working hours, everything under one roof and include production dates on what I am buying.
Although I am willing to accomodate a few inconveniences the hardest one to swallow is that my local town centre (which is less than a 5 minute walk for me) is never open! The retailers are doing themselves out of business and they are *still* stubbornly refusing to change! Frankly I have little sympathy.
People shop at supermarkets asthey’re cheap, and it’s all they can afford. It’s more a case of country folk being out of touch
Note taken, lets spread the word..
There aren’t many working class farm owners in England – they all want profit margins to pay themselves, and their staffs, considerable amounts of money. That’s capitalism – buyers are always going to use the most efficient operations. Not the farms wanting to pay themselves 40k a year
Agree almost entirely. Except your estimate of the poor – there are now tens of of thousands of people in the UK, many disabled or with small children, who cannot afford to both regularly eat and heat their home in the same week. And the numbers will grow exponentially when the new tranche of welfare ‘reforms’ cut in in april, with the bedroom tax and the cuts in council tax support.. However as this directly results from coalition government policies, it wasn’t the case when most of the sad story you tell was taking place.
Well written ‘you’re so thick you don’t even know it’ made me laugh and have to say I would tend to agree!
Interesting to see that those comments which support this article know the difference between you’re and your.
That’s “It’s” interesting, grammar nazi.
It seems there’s a big divide between the reaction to this article. Those who think it’s well written probably cook their food from ingredients they know, (and you don’t have to be rich to eat quality ingredients, you can be vegetarian or seldom eat meat like most of the world’s population in poverty). Those who think it’s insulting are only insulted because they buy the cheap crap that this article refers to. Simple, if you’re struggling financially, learn how to get your protein from things like lentils like most of the world do. I am an occasional meat eater but I respect the fact that it is an animal that has been reared and killed, we have become so detached from that fact when the meat is processed and packaged in a massive factory, yet when we don’t know whether that poor beast was a cow or a horse we get all uppity. It just seems ridiculous that we care what species it is when we can’t care that much about its welfare when we choose the cheap option.
Interesting read … thanks
This food scandal isnt something that just effects the UK and even if consumers there took more interest in the origin of their food, as they do generally in France it wouldnt prevent it occurring. I think educating the public on how food is produced is a great idea but is not a silver bullet, farmers are also part of the market and should be enterprising in managing and developing their own markets rather than enabling supermarkets to exploit agriculture and consumers, and then run crying blaming evreyone but themselves when it all goes wrong, after all farmers should know more about food production than your average consumer your blaming here.
what a pile of horse shit, price sensitive segmentation is significant not tiny as you claim and this is all about value products.
I don’t think one should eat animal flesh and then complain that it comes from the wrong animal.
Cost of a locally shot pheasant £2, cost of 2 types of veg from local market £2
Meal for 2 = £4
Making stock from the carcass is free, turning the stock into a soup is easy and very cheap.
Feeding two people for two meals = £5.
That is healthy food, locally sourced supporting english products cheaply.
But that is probably to much like hard work for the fast food addicts and benefit scroungers.
Not really sure what benefit scroungers have to do with horsemeat in burgers. Why don’t we blame it on the immigrants too? They don’t seem to have had a bashing on this thread yet.
Reblogged this on wherewisemenshoot and commented:
A very good post about the recent horse meat scandal. I hope this situation will encourage more people to eat healthy local produce which does not have to be expensive.
Very good point. I am not sure though it is fair to leave the blame for this entirely at the door of New Labour’s health and safety regulations – I remember campaigning about exactly this stuff as a student in the early nineties under Thatcher and Major – no one listened to us then either, just a bunch of lefty hippy vegetarian hunt sabs so they said.
Support Farmers in the UK please !
All we need is another Fuel crisis , or problem where food from abroad cannot get to our supermarkets .
How long would our food supplies last ?
I would say a week or Two at most then the whole country would be Starving !
And who would you turn to ?
The Farmers .
But if they are not looked after and going out of business . There will be no farmers around to even produce the food.
Think about that.
If one of these things crisis’ did happen I’m fairly sure the farmers wouldn’t waste any time taking advantage of the situation and raising prices through the roof. Like when there was a bacon shortage because of foot and mouth. Incidentally the price never seemed to come back down once the crisis was over.
I think the article is wrong and naive to suggest that prices, allegedly driven down by consumers, is at fault. Those most needing cheaper prices are likely to come from the lower socio economic groups in society and they are also possibly the least academic / worldly in spotting the link between driving down price result in driving down quality. Even if people were aware of such a bigger picture necessity alone, due to the economic climate, will result in people shopping around for the cheapest item.
Paying higher prices would potentially be acceptable to all people IF they knew exactly what they were paying for. They would still go for the best price/quality combination that they can afford.
Competition between suppliers is good as it stops people being ripped off, but when the retailers and suppliers take it to far and start doing illegal things or are not checking that illegal things are being done to their supplies then sorry I do not think it is the individual but the corporate and government bodies responsible who need to police that for us on both trust and legislation.
The suppliers have basically lied to the consumers. For example if you saw a pack of 10 burgers labelled as “100% beef burgers” for £5. right alongside an identical box but with ingredients changed to “beef, horse and possibly other meat burgers, from unknown source and quality with possible health risks as no quality checks are in place” also for £5. what do you think most people would choose? If they saw the second box for £4 even what do you think they would choose?
People do not necessarily fall into the afford it or not category either. I can easily afford to eat what I like, when I like, and dine out in fine restaurants frequently. However, my son happens to like cheap burgers and what I would see as “naff” food. (Why I don’t know but he does and he chooses his food in the super market – and yes we do give him guidance!)
On occasion I will stop at a road side cafe and eat a cheap burger too as it is convenient and I am hungry whilst travelling. I am not a food snob and can appreciate a timely burger and onions at a public event just as much as fine dining in a top London restaurant for example.
Don’t pick on the consumer, it is not their fault. The fault lies firmly with the suppliers who have lied and deceived and possibly even those entrusted to set up the law so that such things cannot happen.
I don’t care who is to blame tbh. I know I will eat horse, donkey, or any other meat as long as it is LABELLED as such! I will buy the cheapest I can because I have to. The bills don’t pay themselves, but if I don’t pay them I got no gas and electricity to cook food with so the food I use has to be cheap. End of. I make meals from scratch, I don’t buy ready meals, so just do regular people like me a favour and LABEL the meat as what it really is, and we will still buy it!
What a load of sanctimonious bollocks. Yes it’s my fault that your incestuous little industry rips people off at every turn. And yes, people should pay above the average just so they can line your pockets! What planet are you living on? One that will bring in spherical cows very soon I’d imagine.
I agree, mostly, but how come it’s the consumers fault for not checking where their food comes from but not the farmers fault for checking where their animal feed comes from (in the case of bse)? One rule for us, another for them!? Perhaps if families could still afford to house and feed themselves on one persons wages and have someone stay at home to shop at farmers markets and cook meals from scratch, then ‘fast food’ wouldn’t be required. It’s a much more involved problem than simply people ‘not caring’.
Thanks. You’re about the only person who has noted the practicalities of obtaining “local” produce that I mentioned.
When Fukishima went up in smoke, I thought the world would say that’s it, That’s enough Nuclear power… but what happened, Japan put up more nuclear power stations.
We face climate change, who is listening? who cares? nobody.
Nobody cares then and nobody cares now.
And I hate it.
You make some very good points. And yes I’m sure it must have been very frustrating for you to see the writing on the wall and try so hard to raise awareness and campaign against these issues with so little response and support from the general public.
But the reality is that there are any number of worthy and important campaigns at any given moment and they are all constantly jostling for our attention and support.
As I said, you make many very good and important points. And there is a lot of information in your piece which is new to me and very good to learn. However, you also say a few things which are, in my opinion, questionable and weaken your argument considerably.
I would argue that the number of people who can’t afford to eat adequately, and for whom “supersaver” supermarket offers are a lifeline, is much higher than you think, certainly not “tiny” and constantly increasing. You sound like someone who is reasonably well-off and possibly has never been in the position of wondering how the hell they are going to pay their bills next month. A lot of people in this country have. A lot of people around the world have. Trying to make ends meet is a constant reality for a lot of people and as such, it is not suprising that cheap deals sell well.
In my life I have had the good fortune to be financially comfortable on many occasions, but also had times in my life where I was unable even to afford basic rent and a trip to the supermarket was a carefully pre-planned operation calculated down to the penny. The reason I share this is because it serves as a good case study. When I was well-off, I would frequently buy fresh, locally-sourced produce from my local butcher and corner shops.
But in the times when money was scarce, my decisions were inevtiably based on price first, quality (and politics) second and I bought my food where I could afford it.
I agree that you get what you pay for, and to think that there isn’t all sorts of rubbbish in these low-priced options is ridiculous. This appears to be unfortunately one of the many sacrifices that people on low-income have to make. I personally am neither suprised nor quite frankly particularly scandalised by the fact there is horse-meat in our food. The French eat horse-meat just as they do beef and chicken etc. so that really doesn’t bother me.
What ofcourse bothers me is the mis-labelling which for me is the key issue. And hopefully this debacle will go some way to shaking up some entrenched bad practices and also perhaps, like you say, highlighting some of the inequalities in requirements for UK and foreign farmers (which I was unaware of till reading your piece).
You make good points. Keep making them. And thankyou for sharing the information and raising awareness as you are doing. What you’re doing is important and hopefully making a difference (even if you don’t always feel that it is).
But tread carefully when labelling all people trying to make ends meet as ignorants and uncaring. Being poor does not automatically imply lethargy, a lack of education or a lack of moral compass.
You make good points and a strong valid argument which deserves attention and support. But your tone is condescending and patronising and will alienate a lot of the people who you need to listen to you. You come across as someone who lacks the ability to understand and empathise with the sort of choices that millions of people have to make everyday. I’m sure that’s not the case. But that’s how you come across. I understand why you are angry but your anger weakens your argument. It does not belong in this article. An article which could otherwise have a much stronger impact.
All the best and keep up the good work.
Hello
I would be interested to know how old you are. I have also been a student and on the bread line so to speak (I put studying ahead of drinking etc and paid my 1025 GBP upfront as my parents wouldn’t, just to put some real context on it).
I have never found supermarkets to be especially cheap. They have some *excellent* offers from time to time but that saves me about 5 quid per month on usually non food items. I think I could get the better prices on fresh fruit and veg in particular elsewhere.
I remember a report coming out a good few years ago stating that we in britain would be surprised at the amount of horse meat in our food , why was nothing done about it back then. I also remember bute being banned from use here because horses slaughtered in this country were destined for the food chains,my horse was on bute at the time for severe back pain.So this is not a new thing its been happening for many years.
Reblogged this on The Big Picture and commented:
A brilliant portrayal of the Horsemeat scandal. Much better than I could ever put it. And you know what? Having read it I’m inclined to agree with everything that’s been written here.
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As a very poor student, I personally think the rising costs of living are mostly to blame. Everyone wants high-quality food, but the majority can’t afford it. I know the meat I buy is usually awful and I’m honestly surprised that horse is the worst thing they’ve found in it.
That being said, I do agree with this article and think it was extremely well-written.
Very badly written article – but I get the point
I am ok with the horse meat scandal as the vast majority of the meat I eat I have witnessed being shot and retrieved by gun dog’s and then have processed myself
Love it! You get what you pay for – cheap meat is just that so quit winging and pony up if you want quality…or go hunting, it’s cheaper, better and gets you off the couch!
Wow! Reading all of the comments and I have realized that once again everybody has made this about themselves and their opinions, we all have opinions, instead of disrespecting each other, lets learn something from each others circumstances.
I respect any body who can express their opinions on such wide spread subject. I have been a vegetarian for the last 6 months and the SOLE reason was because I do not wish to support an industry that inflicts suffering and pain on any earthling.
I mean ok times are hard and we all have to budget (well unless you work for the parliment lol cuz then you can just charge your luxury lifestyle on the tax payers but thats another subject for another day), my point is, these days, it is so expensive to shop and eat healthy and anyone living on a budget (and lets face it there is alot of us), you have to compromise, that doesnt mean you deserve to be served something that isnt even listed under ‘ingredients’ so this is directly fraud and believe me if it was a small company that got involved in this kind of scandal they would be shut down but because its TESCO and more than half of us are like brainwashed zombies,, we continue to go there and support these phat bastards with phat profits earned off our hard earned cash.
It is our fault for giving private companies the control over our food. Ask a tennager or even people older people whether they know how to grown their own food! They dont have a clue, wake up people we are being pulled as far as possible from our roots!
The problem is waaay bigger than horse meat, its the whole industry!! The problem is not general public its the phat corps who have very different agendas!!
So, when are going to change the world? When are we going to say enough is enough?! When are we going to say ‘STOP’ to these people who pollute our food, air, water, destroying our mother nature? Is it that difficult to see what they’re doing to us?! Come On People Wake Up and smell the horse shit, what you see on TV is NOT the truth, its an opinion, use ur brain and you do the same!!
Of course people are going to express their opinions. That’s what the comment section is for and to be frank with you as a vegetarian yours wont carry much weight on this post.
Wow, what a giant heap of crap. I’m all for supporting local producers, but blaming consumers for illegal production methods is ridiculous. Yes, there’s a chain of cause and effect from consumer demand to production, but responsibility for wrong doing lies with those willing to break the law. People like saving money wherever they can (you should hire a better front end designer for your blog for example). I buy more expensive meat, or vegetarian substitutes if i’m short of cash (because i don’t really fancy eating nostrils, lips and private parts, regardless of the mammal). This is a poorly masked piece of emotionally driven, holier than thou nonsense, conveniently aimed at ‘the masses’, allowing you an ego soothing rant. The truth is, the people buying bargain meat probably won’t read this article, so it’s served no purpose other than your self aggrandisement. Typical blogger shite.
Grind ‘em up. You don’t need labeling on your food stuffs. Also I suggest, if you like that, you’ll love new Soylent Green!
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What utter nonsense this article is. It makes plenty of valid points, almost all of which I agree with, yet they are all about an entirely different set of problems, not one of them is related to the fact that there is horsemeat in so called ‘beef’ products.
What a load of crap. You’ve mangled your argument to fit into a “Horse Scandal” shaped hole. Nobody cares about the low quality of the meat, everyone knows they’re getting what they paid for. At least until now, since they paid for low quality beef, and are getting potentially drug filled horse.
And your point about people always being able to afford it is crap too. Yes people could go and buy high quality butcher meat every week, but to afford that that luxury there would be something else they then could not afford. If people choose to have low quality meat so they can afford something else they care more about that is entirely their choice.
Your right on one point however, people don’t care. And why should they?
A terrible piece, a terrible mixture of snobbery and anger hurled at whoever the writer feels hasn’t listened to him . We do have laws about food labeling – your protests were NOT ‘shouting into a gale’ – and people expect them to be upheld. Why are you angry with us?
We know the meat in a 99p ready meal isn’t going to be as good quality as steak that we watch the butcher slice off a carcass. That’s why they cost different prices. But we do expect to be able to assess the quality of what we’re buying, so we can decide whether we want to eat it. People have broken the law and it’s a scandal, and rightly so.
Take a look at this piece from last summer, about local abattoirs.
“The future of our local abattoirs and butchers is under threat from costly over-regulation, MP’s at the Suffolk Show have been warned. The Country Land and Business Association (CLA), Federation of Small Businesses (FSB), the National Federation of Meat and Food Traders (NFMFT) and the Association of Independent Meat Suppliers (AIMS) met with MP’s at the event to highlight their concerns. ”
That’s FOUR trade bodies lobbying our MP’s to stop inspecting meat for cross contamination. And you want to blame us?
“And now you’re furious, because it turns out that when you pay peanuts for something it’s actually not very good. Who knew eh?”
There are actually two separate issues that you are conflating here: quality and knowledge of content. People are angry because the quality is low, sensible people know the “pay peanuts” thing, but because it is not what they were sold. I’d much rather eat good horse than the mechanically extracted rubbish (I refuse to call it meat) you find in the average own-brand nugget. I’d be happy to eat horse as a cheap alternative, heck I’d probably give it a try even if it were no cheaper, but if the ingredients list says beef not horse I expect beef and not horse.
The scary thing is that the people selling you the stuff don’t know exactly what is in it. In fact, their suppliers didn’t know and in some cases several companies down the chain had no idea. If something like a change of meat source can slip quietly into the supply chain so easily, what else is in the stuff that people don’t know about?
I agree with the point you’re making but disagree when you say not to consider the point of people struggling to buy adequate food. There has been a recent rise in demand for food banks, i hear more and more each week of the struggle some people have with day to day costs choosing between putting on their heating to warm a house or going to the shop to feed their family. Please don’t oversee the poverty in this country, it’s disappointing to see this fact put aside so easily. There are many social factors of why people choose these precooked and prepared meals in super markets – please research them.
This article has a horrible tone.
If the writer has such a problem with consumers looking for the cheapest option, I ask how many butchers and farmers pay their workers the LIVING WAGE not the MINIMUM WAGE? You can’t complain about people looking for cheap options here when they as employers only pay the cheapest possible amount for labour!
I’d also suggest all of these people lecturing here take a look
around their house’s. How many things do own that are made in Britain? Where are your clothes made? Where was your car made? How about the computer you’re reading this on? Butchers and farmers, is all your machinery made in the UK? Why is this issue more important than manufacturing jobs, which traditionally (last 50years) employed an awful lot more people than farming?
We, the consumer, don’t owe you a living. I support you, and buy local but I’m not obligated to. Didn’t the farmers buy all their coal during the miners strike from outside the country?
No one, including the supermarkets, forced the farmers to look for cheap options. If this solidarity you now expect from the general public didn’t even exist in your community what hope was there? If all the farmers had stuck together and insisted on minimum prices paid by the supermarkets, minimum quality of feeds etc this situation wouldn’t have happened. Yes, the agricultural community now sticks together but it’s too late, you were too busy under cutting each to sell to the supermarket, for higher profits that you now don’t have a leg to stand on. You made your bed now lie in it.
.
People have a right to spend their hard earned money on food, or any other items, as they see fit. They also have a right to know exactly what they are buying. I don’t care what it is, the buyer should always be fully informed about any product, what it contains, what it doesn’t etc. Surely you can see this?
This ‘us and, the ignorant them’ attitude displayed here does nothing to help the industry or educate those who feel unable to utilise a local butcher with quick, easy recipes.
I should also add the butcher in my village is an award winning butcher, guild of butchers, gold medal etc. Apparently one of Britains top butchers…but most of their meat comes in already butchered so if you ask for a different or slightly unusual cut they can’t do it! This is the precise kind of butchers you are talking about as so ‘much better than supermarkets’. The awards are not ones voted for by the customers but awarded by your very industry!!
I bet most of the people bleeting on about farm butchers etc. here are shopping in places that don’t butcher whole carcuss’s. In fact any person who even used the term ‘farm shop’ is clearly reasonably well off and above the breadline. To those of us who actually live in the country they are just called shops…
So an award winning butcher buys a cow and knows what field it was fed in – cool
Would it be right for him to label it as something it is not ? most people are not outraged at eating horse, they are outraged that they bought beef and got horse.
I eat horse, it was described as horse so I bought it.
Now can you without hesitation, categorically assure me that your award winning butcher knows without fear of redress that the beef he bought had not been injected with any drugs that perhaps shouldnt have been used ? that the animal feed it was fed was not a cheap variety with bad additives, that the land it grazed on had not been comntaminated by some far off factory or radiation falling from Chernobyl or some other leaking nuclear plant, that it was not contaminated by rain originating in some area where chemicals were being used and carried to the area to fall on the farmers fields, That the farmer supplying the cow to the butcher didint use documentation for his cow that was also supplied to 20 other butchers and did in fact simply send any old meat he could get his hands on claiming it was the cow seen in the field the day before.
In short there are no guarantees no matter what you buy or where, and we are aware of that, we aware that the risk is greater if you buy products that have come from eastern europe we are aware that the cheaper the product the more chance there may be a reason one farmer can do it cheaper than the next, but that has nothing to do with selling horse and calling it beef, everything we buy is under threat of criminal activity, Trading Standards sieze tons of good each month that are supposed ot be expensive, quality products but criminals have simply made them with cheap and often dangerous alternatives then stuck an expensive products label on them.
Alcohol, Vodka, Tea, rice, eygptian cotton, coffee, sea bass, wild salmon, Beluga caviar, Foi gras and so much more are regular targets.
Only a few weeks ago it was highlighted that the Cod being sold in many shops was actually Vietnamese fish of some variety but definetely not Cod.
Fraud is rife in thousands of products and especially in foodstuffs of all price ranges
I agree completely…….I always buy from local butcher, never from supermarkets. I do buy bread pasta tinted stuff etc but never meat eggs n often buy there Cakes n some veg when available. It is societies fault thru n thru
How did I know that this wonderful article would become infected with pro-vegetarian bile. Please, vegetarians, take your propaganda elsewhere as this is clearly NOT the place for it.
Hate to brake it to you, but couldn’t give a shif if I ate horse meat. It tasted great! So put a sock in if tree hugger
I bet you can afford to buy you meat from farmers markets and organic free range food.I bet you have plenty of time to consider where your meat comes from and prepare every meal from scratch because you do not have a full time job. I bet you do not have to think about how you can afford to feed your children. If you did you wouldn’t be writing this crap.
Totally agree mste. I used to be a sheep farmer selling my animals into the food matket but akso provided my family with the odd animal, our only wages from the budiness. All the meat I ate was handreared. I took my animal to Nick at the abattoir and 2 days later had meat for months. Nick then closed and I had to rely on supermarket meat. I’ve never trusted processed food or cheap meat because you dont know where it comes from and what it is. What gets me is I got less for a WHOLE lamb then people pay for HALF A LEG of lsmb.
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Time / Quailty / Price
You can ONLY have two of the three.
Time + Quality = Price
If you want fast food of high quality with no investment on your part other than the eating of it = your food budget better be large cause your gonna pay
Quality + Price = Time
If you want food of high quality and low cost = you’ll sacrifice a tonne of your valuable time caring/learning/finding/buying/cooking/storing/growing/raising food
Price + Time = Quality
If you want food cheap, with no investment in its production on your part = you will eat the lower quality/questionably-sourced/GM/chemical-laden/mislabelled/substandard foods grown/raised by others
Based on your own values/situation, you choose which two parts of the food equation end-up on your plate today.
Can the Countryside Alliance please recommend a Licensed British abattoir able to back up their sincere regard for Animal Welfare by way of their CCTV installation?
A poor, one-sided vulgar logic is being applied in this article. Even if we all agree that consumers of a product have a resposnibility for accepting that the price of a product is so low as to make no economic sense to the producer, unless they ‘cut corners’, there is an equal responsibility for both producers and others in the supply chain who add their pound of flesh, so to speak and then also the government who contrive the regulatory framework that the producers and the retailers operate under. So, from the start there needs to be a more realistic sharing of the responsiblity for what is happening to food production as elsewhere in the economy.
Secondly, who do we suppose under the dominant economic system which operates globally has the most to gain from cheap food, i.e the greater the demand, the greater the profit… …erm… let me think; and who has done more than anybody else to ensure the regulatory framework is as ‘light touch’ and unencumbered by ‘red tape’ as possible… erm… let me think; and who is least likely to concern themselves with the consequences and want this to get back on track asap at the expense of a few minor felons… erm… let me think; and who, might I ask, is dismantling every part of a welfare/public sector system that could possibly offer an alternative to the lack of regulation that could potentially prevent this happening and privatising when and where necessary… erm… let me think.
WORK IT OUT MATE; YOU SOUND LIKE A F*CKIN TORY.
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Or you could just not eat meet at all. That would reduce your carbon footprint significantly and gives you free reign to be gloat-y in situations like this.
I was criticised for spending too much money on my weekly shop buying organic, and where possible British meat. But I wanted to be sure that my kids were eating good quality food, that tasted better anyway. When I first switched to organic I was pleasantly surprised that carrots tasted like… Well carrots having got used to a diet where flavour and quality were gradually removed. As more people have bought into organic it has got easy to find and buy and… Cheaper. Buying quality doesn’t have to be more expensive, it might cost an extra fiver a week for organic meat and veg. But ready meals cost more than fresh food so that is where the savings are made. And you can still have burgers and sausages. But they taste nicer and don’t shrivel to nothing when you cook them because they aren’t pumped full of water so you need less to begin with!
What a load of rubbish blaming the consumer, we the consumer may like cheaper meals as it is what we can afford but to say we don’t look at what’s in the package is your opinion. The food that’s wrong came from Irish and English warehouses not forgien country’s as suggested. They have tried to blame the Romanians and the French but this was proven to be false 3 British slaughter houses have been raided. If British beef was so good why did every country ban British beef this is a fact just google it so get facts right before treating the consumer like its there fault because we don’t want to pay for overpriced products.
If I buy cheap beef, I expect it to be just that, cheap beef. If the label said it was horse meat then I wouldn’t buy it.
How is this my fault in any way???
Here’s where I fit in because frankly, I still don’t care. Of course I know that on the occasions I buy a pack of Bird’s Eye Quarter Pounders, I’m not getting quality beef and the other ingredients are questionable. You’d have to be an idiot to think anything else. Yes it is a minor concern its not “food safe” meat, but has it killed anyone? The real irony is when Wayne and Waynetta Slob sit drinking cheap alcohol and smoking 20 a day then are up in arms because the questionable ingredients in their cheap food might have a trace amount of something which might kill them if they consumed a ton of it.
I do hope this whole debacle makes more people realise you can provide decent home cooked meals on a budget but I’m not about start throwing blame about. There are a handful of people who broke the law and they should be brought to account for it. To start getting all high and mighty and blaming everyone who might possibly be involved, whilst saying “I told you so” really doesn’t solve anything.
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of course and well said. Yes, it is time for truth to be exposed, and to be heard! no more victimization., otherwise nothing can be slightly better. Let’s support our local “feeders” and Restaure-Acteurs. your article says it all and clear. I would add taht the watching of Earthlings should be complusory “even though I dislike this word( at school, in curriculum, share it and watch it if haven’t yet. and,..bon appetit ,from France. Jildaz
Oh very well put. I fear you are still shouting into a gale somewhat though
Shame you’re not too overly concerned about the animal welfare aspect…not one mention in the entire post, by the looks of it. Also, there is a better way to avoid this and all the animal suffering and death that even BRITISH farmers cause. Go vegan. Learn how to cook from scratch. Telling people to visit a cosy white-washed farm park isn’t going to show them the reality. You really think farmers want people to know they take away calves from mothers within 24hrs so the milk can be sucked dry by the humans? Do you think the farmers want you to know what happens to the males among those calves? The spent hens? The spent dairy cows? The reality that most ‘free-range’ is not free range at all due to the stupid inaccuracy of the guidelines…
Its easy to blame the consumer, but they only bought what was on sale. I may have bought cheaper meat but I didn’t lie, I didn’t cheat and I didn’t break any laws.
I didn’t put it in school dinners or hospital food, not sure how that’s the consumers fault.
Be angry if you want but don’t go looking for people to blame, try the mirror it might give you the answer
You’re entire article is based on the assumption that the retailers had no choice but to use horse meat because we the consumer demanded cheaper meals. Well these were branded frozen foods not the cheapest in the freezer aisle so if other brands can make a profit without using horse meat surely they were just making a few extra quid on Joe public. Then you’re entire article along with it’s hidden agenda of promoting “your customers” the country folk falls down like a house of cards.
You get what you pay for – low prices? Expect low quality.
Spot on, on every count! And very well put!
This has been going on for years. British farmers adhere to the highest standards of animal welfare and regulation. Ever wonderd
why Danepak bacon is so cheap? Most people don’t care about the provenence of the meat they buy. On a purely personal and smug note, have not eaten meat for 30 years am not a cruading veggie,just wish people would think about th bigger picture
Yeah bring back fox hunting!
Neigh lad, why the long face?
The reason we have a Government and a free Press is to expose and protect us from unscrupulous suppliers, that’s why we pay taxes and buy newspapers. We cannot be expected to run our own tests on our food and our food chain, but we can expect our shops and our elected and paid for representatives to ensure it is done, and for them and the errant suppliers to be vilified in the Press when it fails.
This comment is just a piece of right wing orientated unbalanced piece to try and protect the British farmers at the cost of the consumer. The British consumer has been impoverished by globalization and forced to buy cheap imports, why should it stop and food.
I still don’t see why people find it acceptable to eat cow flesh but not horse meat. What is the difference other than some cultural taboo?
could we not sell 100 percent horse burgers as a cheap premium products, instead of 100 percent lips and arseholes. I might be happy to buy that. I head the uk export a lot of horse meat, so we would be supporting british farmers. And I would also like to point out thought time there has always been people passing of poor meat as good, and this will always happen
We have our own cow and sheep. We have a freezer and a vegie garden. Much better knowing where your food has come from.
“No doubt you are outraged about the horse meat scandal”
Noooooope.
“So now that you care”
Yeah…. Still don’t.
And let’s not forget that chefs, REAL chefs not the jumped-up never-done-a-days -work-in-a-real-kitchen-type television chefs, have also been warning of the escalating power of the supermarket and what they will do to turn a profit for years. And not just supermarkets, but global fast food outlets also.
To mirror the tone of the article; we told you that YOU were murdering the family butcher, the local grocer and the fishmonger, because they just couldn’t compete with the buying power of supermarkets. You were giving them that power because you wouldn’t ask questions. And you wouldn’t ask questions because you were seduced by cheap food, you were buying it by the trolly-load, and you were funding television adverts that would seduce you all over again.
Several years ago polls found that an alarming percentage of British adults have never cooked a meal for their family from scratch, and an even higher percentage cook only on special occasions. I was so shocked by this news that i offered to run FREE cookery classes from my own business to teach locals the basics, the building blocks which could be used to create affordable, safe and flavour packed dishes, made with produce from trustworthy suppliers. I was under the assumption that people would jump at the chance. But guess what? No-one listened then either.
Unfortunately, we are living in a time where new parents don’t know or care how to cook, where kids fudge their exams by visiting the church of Wikipedia, where many think it’s impossible to eat anything unless it’s accompanied by a side-order of chips, and where people confuse “too busy” with “plain damn lazy”. And the next generation will be the same, and the next, until something changes.
Until then enjoy your horse-based lasagne. You reap what you sow.
A random thought experiment : if I put hydrochloric acid in CocaCola bottles, who would be to blame?
Well, it’s all gone a little nuts. This tiny little blog, which only really gets written for my own pleasure, has been inundated with comments and views.
Just wanted to say thank you to everyone who’s taken the time to read the post, whether you agreed with it or not, and to everyone who’s taken the trouble to comment. Given the weight of traffic I couldn’t begin to respond to all of them, but there have been some wonderfully passionate, informed, thought-provoking comments here, and I’ve learnt a lot from them. I’d particularly draw people’s attention to the hill farmer who makes clear how hard he and his family work, seven days a week, for a pittance, and to the Pugh family who are living for year without supermarkets, on a budget, and buying all their food locally (and they’re saving money…).
I’m not a farmer, but I care about farms in the same way I care about the wider countryside, and the fact so many people have engaged has been very encouraging, and quite overwhelming.
So, thank you again, even to those who could find time for a few lines of abuse – I’m glad you read it and I’m sorry I couldn’t persuade you.
I think the one thing which binds every comment so far together is a hope that this scandal may change something about our food chain, and we can all agree on that.
Oscar.
Try this life style , 85 hours a week, £200 pocket money a month, one lie in on a Tuesday morning still need to get down to the farm by 8 to feed the young stock, no girlfriend, no spare time, stressed to fuck all the time because we can’t afford enough help, im thinking im only young once why am i doing this to myself, no one appreciates how hard this is. Pushed to increase production to pay bills, 70 k milk cheque , ooo wow , quarter of it goes on feed bills, Ah!!! after we have paid the quarterly bank payment and all the other bills for that month , shit still 3k down overdraft is going up. The ground is too wet to get on seriously need to spread slurry. Horrid neighbours are moaning about the roads being muddy , they quickly forget its been the wettest winter for a 100 years, and when they say things like you shouldn’t be using the roads , although we have just bought a road brush we cant afford, and i reply well it’s a public right of way and you all drink milk, the loaded snob says, in a horrified tone of voice ‘ You cant say that’. Milk tanker driver told yesterday three farmers in the last few months not so far from me have committed suicide, ‘Found hanging they were’, yes thanks for rubbing my nose in it . Im only 25, things are becoming unbearable. Dept levels are toxic, yet i will never compromise the welfare of my animals , constant pressure, appalling weather, criticism from pressure groups. It’s not very nice and processors and irresponsible retailers and the public demand for cheap food is at the core of this problem. Things have to change or else people like me won’t want to produce food for people like you.
There comes a point where you have to care about what you put in your body. Check out my brother’s book about what happens when you don’t realise that. It’s not just about taste it’s about sustaining your own health especially when the NHS is about to implode and GPs have 12 minutes with 30 seconds for health promotion. http://www.naturerulesok.com Facebook Nature Rules OK. There’s still a huge waiting list for people who need counselling at universities for example and there are things you can do to help yourself while you’re waiting. We all have a choice or at least a choice to make a difference to your own health.
You may accuse me of being lazy not reading every comment. This is a Chicken & Egg situation! Who started it? those who demand or those who supply.
Not everyone will agree with me that it is better to have a little of something good, rather than a big pile of cheap crap.
What needs to be remembered here is the Supermarkets demanding lower & lower prices from suppliers often knowingly pushing them past the point of being able to make money from supplying the product as specified & not putting in safegaurds to protect you or themselves.
We have seen this practice before with cheap clothing on the high street, store groups blaming suppliers for using child labour as production is subbed out, whilst knowingly demanding more than the official factory’s capacity. Our so called western civilised society needs to look at itself!
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Of course you are right decisions are made by the way that consumers shop. Education need to be at the centre of this. Regulation can surely only come through controls on food production and advertising standards. ‘Horse meat’ is the hook but more attention should be drawn to the process that resulted in this even being possible. It goes way deeper that cheap meat. A huge amounts of evidence suggests that grain fed meat is hugely damaging to the nations health yet it more expensive to produce than grass fed. There are decisions being made here that we are not completely aware of and when advertisers are allowed the freedom to shout louder than educators regardless of the product you have to question; does the government truly have the health of the nation as a priority?
Very well said, how many times have I tried to share with my family and friends the steps various foods (veggies and animals) go through to reach their plate. No one wants to hear their veggies are being saturated in chemicals and the animals they love to consume being pumped full of drugs and tortured. Than people are shocked when they hear about these stories as if this information isn’t being constantly thrown in their face. Than I think maybe that’s the problem; people are saturated with so much information about what they should eat, wear even think it becomes to much and they tune out. Only when a story becomes a huge scandal that you’d have to live under a rock to get away from do you hear about it. If people want to go the “ignorance is bliss” route than I hope they enjoy their horsemeat-or Lord knows what else they are ingesting. Yuck.
YES
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Couldn’t agree more with this blog. It’s time for people to start taking responsibility for themselves and the food we eat. You get what you pay for!
NO room for your right wing politics though
Congratulations to the author. This is as right as it gets.
Try this life style , 85 hours a week, £200 pocket money a month, one lie in on a Tuesday morning still need to get down to the farm by 8 to feed the young stock, no girlfriend, no spare time, stressed to fuck all the time because we can’t afford enough help, im thinking im only young once why am i doing this to myself, no one appreciates how hard this is. Pushed to increase production to pay bills, 70 k milk cheque , ooo wow , quarter of it goes on feed bills, Ah!!! after we have paid the quarterly bank payment and all the other bills for that month , shit still 3k down overdraft is going up. The ground is too wet to get on need to spread slurry. Horrid neighbours are moaning about the roads being muddy , they quickly forget its been the wettest winter for a 100 years, and when they say things like you shouldn’t be using the roads , although we have just bought a road brush we cant afford, and i reply well it’s a public right of way and you all drink milk, the loaded snob says, in a horrified tone of voice ‘ You cant say that’. Milk tanker driver told yesterday three farmers in the last few months not so far from me have committed suicide, ‘Found hanging they were’, yes thanks for rubbing my nose in it . Im only 25, things are becoming unbearable. Dept levels are toxic, yet i will never compromise the welfare of my animals , constant pressure, appalling weather, criticism from pressure groups. It’s not very nice and processors and irresponsible retailers and the public demand for cheap food is at the core of this problem. Things have to change or else people like me won’t want to produce food for people like you.
Anonymous, you paint a picture which is sadly familiar and I can only imagine how depressing you find all the comments about “Range Rover driving farmers”. It must feel like you’re working incredibly hard, for very little, and nobody cares.
Not sure if it’s any comfort but I think it’s clear from a lot of the comments above that people do care, and do appreciate it, even if they’re not aware of just how hard it is.
I can only imagine how tough it is. You’re doing something important, and should take pride in it, even if not everyone appreciates it.
Do I really have to say to a farmer ….. “you reap what you sow” nobody to my knowledge was blaming farmers for this situation, how could they, as far as I know it is not the famers that are selling the horses to the processing factories it is the abatoirs, the farmers are being hit hard by this criminal activity since it all means that they will get even less for thier cattle if cheaper horse products are available.
But you blame the consumer.
If the consumer was the reason supermarkets wont pay a fair price for the meat how come the consumers that buy the cheap products are still poor yet the supermarkets are constantly declaring increases in profits ?
There are two winners here, supermarkets and criminals, the rest of us are suffering.
Well said. I know quite a few farmers which have left farming, a butcher who lost his business to bse and supermarket trade. Its a blooming hard life and its about time we as consumers accepted that you get what you pay for.
Kay, I love the way you think, you get what you pay for, please come and buy something from me, tell me anything you want and I will sell it to you, faberge egg, rolls royce, fish tank, stereo, it doesn’t matter what you want I will sell it to you, it is easy for me because obviously you do not think it wrong for me to lable the item as something it is not.
I don’t care if someone wants to sell me horse burger or horse lasagne, providing they tell me what it is before I buy it not label it as 100% beef.
Sooo well said, thanks.
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If you’re that bothered then go veggie http://www.peta.org/issues/animals-used-for-food/meat-wastes-natural-resources.aspx
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Excellent article with exception of your bit about abattoirs…. Yes a lot of abattoirs have closed over the years to be replaced with a few giant ones….. BUT the only abattoir to be caught up in this so far has been that if Peter Boddy…. He runs the abattoir on the tops above our market town… It is very small… Peter employs 8 local people and supplies some of our local butchers… He is one of 5 licensed horse abattoirs in the UK…. Local cottage industry meat producers use his services….. And he breeds deer for the table too…. There is a public footpath running through his very small farm so he’s on view to the public all the time…he is also the only abattoir operator to have been arrested as a result of this current investigation…..not quite sure why, he only deals with carcasses, he isn’t a meat production plant and is licensed to slaughter horses….vets regularly visit the abattoir and all meat destined for the food industry is passed fit for human consumption….
Hopefully this whole episode will persuade folk to buy locally produced food, and use it to make delicious home cooking….dang! Might be a problem here…. The FSA have suspended operations at our tiny local slaughterhouse and now our lovely high quality local meat producers have nowhere to get their meat slaughtered…… Methinks that the problem is one that goes much deeper than we know…. Looks to me like the big powerful supermarkets are putting pressure on the government to find scapegoats in a bid to deflect attention from themselves…….
Now…. What shall I have for tea today.? Fancy a nice home produced horse lasagne! ( I like horsemeat…. It isn’t illegal to produce sell or eat it and its just as yummy as beef!
Well, Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall does in fact sneer at us and as a spokesman for the “big food is bad” campaign he comes across as a supercilious upper class twit telling us we should all be down to our local farms to buy the utterly delicious truffle fed pork loin which is perfectly reasonable at £85 per 100g. He might well have a very good point but oh, he is doing it so very, very wrong.
Every time I hear him banging on about “small producers” and “local farms” I wonder if he’s ever looked at a map and noted that large geographic oddity placed on either side of the Thames and wonder what farms those people can buy from on a weekly basis. Perhaps we should relocate 2-3 million people to Devon to take advantage of the rural benefits he enjoys.
Apart from that the point made here is excellent. One thing that I think is missed though is that supermarkets do not really offer low prices. What they do is screw the farmers to the lowest price, take a significant profit and then use their advertising muscle to convince us all that we’re getting the cheapest price imaginable. And we fall for it. The trick I’ve found is to find places that are smaller but which don’t mean that you have to spend half a day a week trekking from store to store just do get your weekly shop. That is where the supermarkets have it in spades.
well said. Have read some if the replies re budgeting and people being busy. WELL my mum and dad worked full time ( I’m 46 now) they earned very little and we never had ready meals ( very few were available). What we had was a mum who planned a weeks meals in advance and hey some of them didn’t even contain meat. But if it did it came from the butchers.
I work with people every day showing them that actually, with planning, Cooking a meal from scratch can be a cost effective way of feeding your family. The battle sometimes lies with a general societal belief that things that are luxuries are actually necessities. A full sky package vs fresh fruit and veg often = no contest – and sad to say that is evidence based. Like everything ee always seek.out
Had trouble completing the last post….
We always want a quick fix but a little investment in time in planning reps rewards. And yes I do work, have children and my partner works away but I manage ti prepare and cook meals.
I hear people commenting on the taste of meat when they spend a bit more. Wouldn’t it be better to eat good quality stuff less often than cheap poor quality stuff all the time. Just the same with fruits and veg they always taste better when they are in the season they should be in. People think its odd that my 6 yr olds favourite meals are liver and onions with mash, cabbage and broccoli, chicken casserole, tomato and basil pasta, toad in the hole, cottage pie with turkey mince, road dinner………why is that odd
As Italian i can tell you two things. 1st, lasagne alla bolognAIse do not exist in italy, i would already stay away from stuff that isn’t even spelled right, eventually is bolognEse. 2nd, horse meat is an amazing meat, very tasty and often used in Italian cousine… I live in czech republic for over one year now, and i can tell i would give everything for some horse meat.
As a veggie I can look Dobbin in the eye personally, but if if one good thing comes out of this, hopefully it will be the demand for better treatment for animals among the general populace. It is also outrageous that we import so much meat and milk at the expense of our own farmers. Plus whatever happened to meat inspectors? I find it shocking that the remaining abbatoirs have been allowed to self-check with tick box lists. I think all abbatoirs should be monitored by CCTV as well as meat inspectors.
I can’t imagine the food contamination problem boosting support for animal welfare much, even in the UK. While three of the arrests so far are apparently here (two Wales, one Yorkshire), remember that under EU rules we can’t restrict meat imports – including from France, where the mislabelling apparently happened, or Romania where the horses in question were processed.
The requirements for UK abattoirs are academic here anyway: the meat was imported from EU ones, over which our government has no authority. If anything, tightening restrictions on UK abattoirs would make this problem *worse*, by driving even more business abroad than has happened already: why do you think they were using non-UK abattoirs in the first place?
Ultimately the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women and children are your responsibility; we tried to tell you but you wouldn’t listen. If it hadn’t been for the agriculture industry’s insane demands for below market value fuel then it would never have been necessary to invade Iraq. You have only yourselves to blame.
What a cretinous argument you evince. As I recall the Countryside Alliance told us they would ‘have’ to shoot all their hounds if the ‘Hunting with dogs’ bill was passed. Mercifully that was another of their lies.
Now you decide to hector ordinary people, who have been defrauded -not by their choices but by a criminal conspiracy greater even than the one which allows meat to be injected with water – and somehow that is ‘their’ own fault? Manure.
I’d rather eat bute-ridden horse than visit one of your over-priced, elitist farm-shops. Do business with the Countryside Alliance? You must be a member of that other august body; the Thurrock Hunt!
So the answer to being targetted by criminals selling goods by falsely labelling them is to turn Vegetarian. great, but what happens when the criminals cannot target meat products, we already know that non-organic food is being sold labelled as organic, how much further will they be able to fool us, what will the veggie burgers and vegetable lasagne contain in the future ?
Stay healthy be vegetarian, but those considering making the leap should be aware of some of the health hazards this may entail, I am not saying don’t do it, I am not saying it is more dangerous than being a meat eater, just be aware.
DEPRESSION
MOST AT RISK: VEGETARIANS
A lack of vitamin B12 can cause mild neurological problems, including mood swings and depression
One of the major vitamin deficiencies vegetarians risk is a lack of vitamin B12.
Found only in meat and dairy foods or foods such as cereal that have been artificially fortified, it is vital for cell growth and nerve function.
You don’t need to eat much animal protein to get enough – an adult needs just 1.5mcg a day, and a couple of slices of meat will provide that.
But if you don’t get even this small amount of B12 you are at risk of mild neurological problems, including mood swings and depression.
‘A vitamin B12 deficiency can manifest itself in extreme fatigue and brain or mood problems,’ says Bridget Benelam, from the British Nutrition Foundation.
‘Eating yeast products such as Marmite can help because they contain B12, although meat is the best source
.’
MUSCLE ATROPHY
MOST AT RISK: VEGETARIANS
Muscle atrophy, or wasting, is a potential side-effect linked to any diet that cuts out protein, which is essential for building and maintaining muscle health.
‘Anyone switching from a meat-eating to a vegetarian diet who doesn’t replace the protein supplied by meat could be at risk of unhealthy muscle loss,’ says Louise Sutton, a dietician at Leeds Metropolitan University.
DENTAL EROSION
MOST AT RISK: VEGETARIANS
Veggies like courgettes, peppers, onions and aubergines can cause acid erosion
Dental erosion is caused when acid comes into contact with the teeth. Fruit and vegetables are generally acidic and studies have suggested vegetarians are more at risk.
Dentists at the University of Dundee found that different cooking methods could increase the acidity of vegetarian dishes, such as roasted vegetables. Exposure to high temperatures produced chemical changes that made the acid more concentrated, and more damaging to teeth.
In particular, the acidity level of courgettes, peppers, onions and aubergines increased when roasted.
INFERTILITY
MOST AT RISK: VEGETARIANS
About one in six couples experience problems trying to conceive and there is some evidence showing that the problem is compounded by a vegetarian diet.
Studies have suggested that eating large amounts of soya, popular with vegetarians because it provides protein, can affect a woman’s fertility.
Researchers at King’s College London showed that a compound in soya called genistein sabotages sperm as it swims towards the egg.
Genistein is present in all soya products. The researchers recommended that women avoid soya around the most fertile times of the month to aid conception.
What’s elitist about selling local fresh produce? Sounds like inverted snobbery on your part.
It’s not an issue of demand, but of laziness. I can get cheaper, better quality food at my local farms. But most people are in Tesco already, for their breakfast cereal and chocolate bars…so while they aren’t ‘demanding’ cheap meat, it’s too convenient to pass up when it’s waved under thier noses. People are opportunist and lazy, but I’ve yet to hear someone say “Oh, I don’t care about the quality, I just want the cheapest”. If people realised how big the quality gap is, they’d probably make different choices, but the supermarkets tell folk that their cheapest meat is still good quality, and most people seem too lazy to actually question the claim. Maybe now, they will.
Yes I am too lazy to walk the 5.3 miles to my nearest farm shop and back, it wouldn’t matter that I would have to carry the heavy bags of shopping, I don’t have to worry about that as a disabled war pensioner because I wouldn’t be able to lift them in the first place.
But please tell me, what has your post got to do with criminals selling goods under false labels ?
They don’t just target cheap products, they don’t just target meat, organic foods are often targetted as well as “free range eggs” and “fresh today eggs”
+200
Don’t eat processed food, and insist on only meat from the UK. It that’s too expensive, eat less meat. We do, because I’d rather know what I am eating and feeding to my family.
And.. LEARN HOW TO COOK. Amazing how so many people think cooking from scratch is time consuming, difficult and expensive. Bullshit.
Why ? how will eating less processed foods stop criminals from substituting other products into goods labelled as something else, how will this stop criminals selling non-organic veg as organic, how will this stop criminals putting undesireable ingredients into processed foods like cheese, tinned meats, tinned fish, ham and many other processed foods. how will this stop criminals selling us vietnamese cobler described as Cod and it if does stop them what makes you think they won’t switch thier operations to other goods or target more expensive products as they do with ciggarettes, vodka, whiskey, perfume, handbags, clothing and all the other things ?
How will buying only meat from the UK help if criminals label something as being from the UK.
When you go to a farm shop can you categorically say that the farmer is telling the truth, recent arrests would point to otherwise, whilst I accept that the majority of British farmers are honest, there are no guarantees that the public can implement.
You’re splitting hairs. Nothing’s foolproof, but processing food makes it much more difficult to trace the ‘raw materials’. Which is what went wrong with Findus.
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Here here, it’s not difficult to learn to cook or to budget using real ingredients, i think part of the problem is that home economics was taken off the silibus when gramar schools were closed down. There has been a generation of children that have not been taught how to look after their families and have just resorted to buying processed crap. So my question to the masses is, is it an expense problem or a lack of training and food education?
I suspect that the horse meat is actually the safest part of the hamburger. They feed the chicken poop and antibiotics to the cow, and then illegal aliens have been conscripted to work at the processing plant and are required to work at an insane speed…
The food offered at the grocery, at the fast food places isn’t safe to eat…
I thought that Robin Cook did a very good job in educating the masses (about hamburger) with his novel “Toxin”.
But… isn’t it the conservative viewpoint that anything the market will bear is good, and if it makes us sick… that is still ok?
Thank you! This applies to cereal farmers too – people say that the price of wheat’s gone up, but the price of fertiliser has trebled and the weather’s not getting any better, however cheap you want your Wheatos!
Anyone got a television ? when first put onto the market a television cost more than a weeks wages, then the farmers wanted them and drove the price down so now all the TV manufactures can get for them is about a fifth of a weeks wages, get real people, we all want cheaper products in everything we buy.
Now answer me this, some of the meat you sell at a very low price goes to make cheap processed foods, we accept that, what about the rest of the meat you sell, are you not making a profit on that, according to the replies on here it seems that only a few buy cheap processed meat and most buy fresh from reputable butchers or farmers markets. or are those people also buying it at a price that is way below a value for money price are they also breaking the backs of UK Farmers ?
You can’t have it both ways, your either selling it to high quality butchers or in your farm shop at a fair price or your selling it cheap to supermarkets and the customers who use high quality butchers and farmers markets.
I ain’t no farmer but I would rather produce less and sell it for more in my little shop and a few select local buyers and say “stick it” to the supermarkets I won’t produce as much, see how far you get now that your all campaigning to use local produce, see how far you get when you cant by ANY local produce.
The very people who are bleating on here about “you should pay more for what you get then you won’t have to eat horse” and “poor farmers dont get a fair deal” are also paying below market price it seems since they keep telling us they are paying less than those who use supermarkets.
Supermarkets pay less than a fair price because they can, because they believe buying in high volume gives them that right, what is your excuse ?
Looks like you’re as sick of people bleating on about eating horse – as some of us are as sick of hearing those in the death trade – sorry – meat & dairy farmers – bleat on about how hard done by they are – what goes around comes around – if you make your living from the slavery and murder of other living beings – I’m not sure what else you could expect! – oh & by the way – there’s no such thing as a ‘good abbatoir’ – ask any farm animal!
A new spin on the old phrase “if you pay peanuts you’re going to get monkeys.”
Are you going for a ‘disappointed parent’ type of tone with this piece or a more generic and self gratifying ‘I told you so’?
Firstly, these people aren’t going to change their habits, and your seemingly right-wing mindset prevents you from seeing why. No, it’s not your attitude (though typically if you do want people to listen to your points and take you seriously you might want to change that), but the system itself, top to bottom.
You’ve done the same thing you accuse others of, and misplaced the blame. It lies with everyone, starting with MPs and working it’s way down, through companies and media and eventually to us. You speak of the system as though we have some control over it, which I find laughable. We’re told what to buy, and despite the old mantra, the customer doesn’t come first, profit does. Always. And that profit has to be as big as possible. That’s why I wasn’t particularly outraged about this scandal, because I know how bad capitalism has gotten. Whats a few horse burgers when Nestle quite happily kills babies and wars are fought in Africa to make more playstations? Horse meat is not really a shocker, although it is a bit closer to home. That’s probably where the anger comes from.
The blame of the pubic lies in not doing anything to improve the system and continuing to support it, but most are kept ignorant of how bad things are anyway, whether that be where our food comes from or our electronics, or clothes, or pretty much anything else you can think of. You can’t get out of this system, unless either a.) you want to live like a hermit or b.) everyone decides they’re going to do something about it at the same time. Otherwise, none of us have any power. As superior as you may feel, those who actually hold power are still laughing at you.
Secondly, and this issue ties closely to my previous point, things aren’t going to change because there are now simply too many of us (and that problem is getting worse and shows no sign of changing). This planet is overpopulated, and that along with the system we have = a lot of problems, and you seemingly underestimate how difficult it is for people, even in this country. I’ve watched my family struggle most of my life. I’m still very grateful for what I have, and recognize that we’re still far better off than a lot of people. My beliefs are not borne out of jealousy, but the perspective gained by watching my family and those worse off. There are too many part-time jobs now (leading to skewed employment figures). Minimum wage isn’t a living wage. People are overworked for very little in return. when it comes to feeding a full family, those who don’t have the resources some do are going get as much food as they can for as little is they can. They aren’t going to have one or two organic chickens a week and then starve for the rest of it. This is going to get worse, not better, and in another generations time expect what you see to be quite appalling. And for all the issues this is going to create, it just means extra demand, and the companies supplying it are going to be absolutely loving it.
You gave it a good shot, but what you managed to come up with isn’t helping your cause. If you want things like this to change, everything needs to change, and for all the good that would do in the long run, you aren’t going to like it.
A final note on one of the first mistakes you made in this piece: I really wouldn’t prefer to see the horses at Kempton. At least that way their deaths aren’t entertainment for everyone before they get ground up and put into lasagnes. Just much adding insult to injury really.
Les Ferris Brilliant and well put hit all the nails on the head
Bleeding heart vegetarian, go teach every other carniverous animal on the planet how to kill its prey humanely and tell them to stop ripping their prey to shreds, digesting them slowly, poisoning them, paralyzing them and eating them whole, chasing them for hours or days then mauling them to death, we are humans designed to eat meat, about the only decent thing a human does on this planet is try to make death as painless as possible for its prey.
Snap!
I posted a similar piece on the same subject back on the twelfth of the month:
http://havewehadhelp.wordpress.com/2013/02/12/carnivores-of-the-world-unite/
Excellent post! Well worth the read. Unfortunately, it’s a truth people don’t want to hear.
We have met the enemy and he is us. (Pogo)
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You speak the truth and it is great that you’ve combined your knowledge with excellent writing ability to tell the wider community what they are missing. I completely agree with you and am not blaming the governments, but that is probably because I don’t eat “beef” I am totally for keeping small specialised local shops and honest, hard working farmers in business. I don’t know what it is that makes me feel that way, I guess its community spirit? Congrats on being freshly pressed.
My first published article as a journalist was how certain big dairies in Scotland were in cahoots with the supermarkets and squeezing the life out of farmers (literally, I sat with one in tears). I had to fight my ass off to get it in the paper and when it was published…no, the nationals did not come calling. No one gave a toss!
Depressing to think that was 20 years ago and things went downhill from there.
I think this is a great post. I think a lot of people that have commented have good points and not so good points but most importantly, even if you disagree it got you thinking and that’s what we need more of in this world- people stopping to think once in a while. I invite you to my blog as well where you might even think a little more
http://jbranchohio.wordpress.com/
After hearing this I was so shocked, how could that happen? I just hope they get to the bottom of it.
Excellent article. We must support our local shops and not use the supermarkets as our only food source
I only get meat from my uncle who raises cows and pigs, and I buy cartons of eggs from a woman with chickens.I have met those animals before I ate them. Otherwise, I am a vegetarian. If you want to be sure where your meat comes from, do that. If you don’t care and it tastes all the same to you, eat horse.
STORM has the answer, all you millions of people who are at risk of being conned or eating something you thought was something else or inferior quality foods, just go and find a relative who raises cows and a friend who raises chickens oh and while your eating them become a vegetarian. ………. the mind boggles
You should move to the U.S. – we don’t have any problems like this. JUST kidding! Our system is far more screwed up than yours! That said, I agree w/ many above that vegetarianism is a good option for many reasons. Your self-righteous tone is NOTHING compared to the finger-pointing and blame that will be going around once the effects of climate change become more apparent.
We all make choices every day that affect things larger than ourselves, including the economic markets, meat industry, and even the climate. Cutting back on meat consumption, or eliminating it completely is good for your health and makes a big difference to climate change because corporate agriculture and giant feed lots are a huge contributor.
Congrats on the Freshly Pressed. Stay outraged, but don’t get as obnoxious as the outraged Americans.
Many people here say that becoming vegetarian is the answer, cool, no problem with that, but what happens when everyone does, I will tell you, all the poor sheep and cattle farmers will kill off all their animals because they will need the land they graze on to grow crops, the increase in demand for crop growing fields will make horses, cattle and sheep as unwanted on the land as foxes and badgers, massive culls will take place and a new form of sport hunting will emerge, there just isn’t enough arrable land without taking over the grazing land for the production of crops.
What say you to that Mr and Mrs Vegetarian ?
Well, I’m kind of a “let nature take its course” kind of person. Those animals wouldn’t exist (except for wool production and horseback riding) if it weren’t for our meat-eating habits. And they probably ought not to be overgrazing the land anyway. If we planted “food forests” with tiers of groundcovers, berries, nut trees, and other crops, we could imitate the natural contours of the landscape and our air and water would be healthier, too.
Hard to imagine “sport hunting” of sheep and cattle, though. Not too exciting. Imagine, though, the black market for meat!
What is the problem with eating horse anyway? It’s leaner than beef and delicious. I wish we could buy it here in Australia.
I love you. You’re my hero. Sorry if this comes off as creepy, but seriously. THANK YOU for telling the truth.
Reblogged this on cwilsonwidereading.
once again an amazing post has been turned into a battleground. why cant you all just accept that this is an amazing post and the writer is right – Great post
It really is our fault as a the majority for not expressing that we want quality – Although i am from australia, I have herd about this on the news, Its like sad and all that people ate horse instead of beef… but seriously, it is their own fault – Fact is you skimp out, you get Crap, so dont complain and blame when your meat tastes like shit… you payed for the meat not the quality.
Thank you for posting this
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While not specifically limited to just the food industry, this is a most excellent post! With a few change of words, you could also hit the fruits, vegetables and even clothing market with the exact same reasoning!
Reblogged this on Stuff Found and commented:
More than just the beef industry is reflected in these words,
100% correct in what’s been written
Never a truer word said
Another comment? Well, horse meat never killed anyone. Welcome to the world of cutting corners and saving a buck.
No doubt a very well written article. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.
Excellent post! Too many corners cut today and consumers need to think about what they’re putting into their bodies and making changes; not relying on the government to do it for them.
I agree with much of what you’ve said, not so much with some of your points but what bears repeating (and repeating and repeating) is if the ingredients list is long, and if it contains ingredients your grandmother wouldn’t have recognized, you shouldn’t be putting it in your body. Cook. Real. Food. Avoid heavily processed garbage, and you’re already halfway to beating this nonsense. Eat. Real Food. My teenaged son complains when I come home from shopping; he says “you didn’t buy any food… you bought Ingredients”. Exactly.
I really like the quote about your teenage son. Ingredients. Perfect. Processed foods aren’t real food.
This reminds me of the stupid case where a woman sued McDonald’s because her coffee was too hot and she burned herself. Or stupider yet, when people sue McDonald’s for making them fat. I know it’s not quite the same, but the premise is similar. We are responsible for what we eat and for knowing what is in what we eat. If it’s on the label, we have no excuse. And everyone knows frozen and fast foods aren’t any good for you. Great post.
The worst part though is when labels are stupified. “Careful: hot” on the mcdonalds coffee. I mean, come on!
Lol. I know. It’s terrible!
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And the really hilarious thing is that horse will taste better because it’s grass fed.
Good post, I like how you wrote it! Come visit our site at http://www.surfskiesp.com if you want to know about Ocean Sports! Regards.
Carlos
I would gladly pay more money to an Australia farmer to get fresh produce rather than try and save a buck with the retail giants. It’s just unfortunate that these people are being run off the land because of low prices being offered for their product, extra health regulations yet we allow cheap imports in which haven’t undergone the same regulations. It’s dumb. I hope many Australians read this and then decide to support their local farmers more so we can prevent this type of madness (local abattoirs shutting, farmers selling up their farms to foreigners) happening here.
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The amount of ‘We’ used in this post had me thinking George Galloway had written it, as he is fond of saying ‘we told you, we did this and that, we told you so…but you didn’t listen’.
I think people will have their own views on this and will view this issue from different angles, as the author has done here. The fundamental points still cannot be ignored in my view. The word ‘cheap’ isn’t a bad word and let’s not put the blame on people wanting to save a little by opting to buy products which give them value.
There has been catastrophic failures at all levels, but ultimately it is the governments fault in failing to prevent this from happening. As always, the government right now, has us believe that they are dealing with it, side lining the masses and releasing multiple statements to confuse us further more. We elect the government to protect serve us and protect us – what the hell were they doing up until this issue was discovered?
Big supermarkets, unfortunately, are here to stay and that’s something we can’t change.
I don’t agree. I think we should try to change. Please see my post below.
Of course change is required, but how to bring about the change is the question? Can it be done via political means – or by another means? What’s more effective and quicker?
I agree very strongly with thatoscarindia, who wrote the post about horse meat that our discussion arises from, that we have a personal responsibility to make wholesome choices, and we must exercise this every day. I also recognize how hard it is to make wholesome choices sometimes – it seems like the cards are stacked against you every way you turn. I think we have to keep trying though, and, if enough people live more consciously then eventually there will be a critical mass of people which will effect the markets. (On my more pessimistic days I worry that this won’t happen before we’ve ruined our beautiful planet, but I try not to get stuck in this frame of mind, because it’s very disempowering.) I see you work in Communications, so getting messages across is your profession. You’ll know that messages are received in different ways by different audiences, and by every individual. I know there is a lot of social science going into analyzing those audiences and trying to work out the magic key to getting the maximum impact on them. I think we need to speak to the heart as well as the head, and I think that experiential learning is the most effective. It takes time. I don’t know if there is a really quick way, although sometimes things gather momemtum, like the Civil Rights movement in the U.S. in the 50s and 60s. It often takes an accumulation of experience to make such a thing happen.
In terms of making choices – majority of people only make a choice when they have to, like now, the situation with horse meat entering the food chain. People are now making choices to whether continue using large supermarkets or revert back to their local butchers. As a British Asian – I and neither has anyone one member of my family ever purchased their meat from such supermarkets – our meat has always been purchased from our local butchers – it has allot to do with Asian culture and religion – so as far as making a change for me – it’s zero, I am already doing the right thing by buying local products by local means. Speaking to my local butcher the other day – he said they experienced a massive increase of customers – more non-Asians wanting to buy – as all of them decided it was unsafe for them to continue shopping for meat with their local supermarkets.
I still stand with the view that the government needs to represent us. Fighting those who you elected means working against your own choice and you will simply get no where. People need to drive the agenda for the government to work in our favour. Petitions, demonstrations and making a one-big-collective voice means you will be heard, otherwise you run the risk of missing the opportunity.
Don’t let anyone believe the government cannot be changed, the Arab spring few years ago proved people-revolution is possible, although what I saw happening during the Arab spring isn’t the way I’d like to see happening in UK but people getting together, boycotting openly will have a massive impact – one which will bring the power back into the hands of the people. The government is not-untouchable.
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This is a great post and I’ll be re-blogging it. Your writing in this, and other posts, burns with the angry desire for authenticity. I think it’s the ache of our age. You are absolutely right, we are responsible for the world we create through our choices. Well said.
I was raised by a mother who worked part-time and cooked real food, from ingredients, and knew how to use up leftovers. She had been taught by her mum in turn, and both my grandmothers were of the WWII generation, where I think they learned how to live frugally and resourcefully. There are elements of conservatism in the family life I knew as a child that I have sought to move on from in my adult life, but in terms of food I’m 100% with the people who mourn the state of the food industry, contemporary consumer habits, and the lack of time available for proper cooking, or indeed proper living.
Finding your post in ‘Freshly Pressed’ has come at a time when I’m struggling with paradox. This month I’ve been trying out a Vegan diet, with the intention of exploring whether this is a lifestyle change I’d like to adopt permanently. I’ve been blogging about my experiences at hereigovegan.wordpress.com.
One of my reasons for transitioning to Vegan is concern about animal welfare and horror at the practices of the food industry. I had a grandfather who was a vet and another who was a free-range pedigree poultry breeder, both trying to do the best in their professions, but I don’t know if I would ever feel confident enough about animal welfare in today’s society that I would feel it’s ok to eat an animal/animal’s products. I sometimes think I might be able to rear animals for food purposes myself, and kill them, but I’ve never tested that, so I don’t really know. What I do know is, that the level of care I think a ‘used’ animal deserves leaves no room for profit. Trying to make money out of selling animals for milk, meat etc. means that the pressures of the market will always be there, and, as you acknowledge, they are ferocious pressures.
The paradox I’m struggling with at the moment, in my third week of Veganism is the knowledge that it’s not just animal welfare that’s important. Human welfare is equally important, and, I’d go as far as to say that, if we can’t get the human welfare sorted out, there’s little chance that we’ll manage it for the animals as well. Humans feeling the pressure for whatever reason can easily cut moral corners and turn a blind eye to the sufferings of others.
You rightly acknowledge the misery caused in the lives of food producers in the UK as they’ve struggled to survive under market pressure and meet the ever-more-ridiculous demands of legislation. There is a great deal of human suffering here.
I have a sneaking suspicion that, by choosing Vegan, I’m simply shifting the human suffering elsewhere. As I’ve started choosing different products (for example: soya, quinoa, different plant oils) I’ve noticed that many of them come from far-away places and I have nothing but the bland assurances on the product’s packaging that what I’m consuming has been ethically produced. You don’t have to Google very far to find evidence that the West’s appetite for different foods, or ‘wholefoods’, or ‘superfoods’, is leading, in some cases, to the clearance of native habitat, and to the displacement and/or hunger of local populations.
And that’s to say nothing of the air miles the lie behind the food I’m now choosing to eat. It’s harder to avoid imported food if you eat Vegan in the UK, unless you live on root vegetables, cabbage and potatoes.
Your post vividly expresses the monster we’ve collectively created in the Food Industry by our desire for cheap and convenient food. I can see that choosing a Vegan diet isn’t going to make that monster go away. There are still huge ethical concerns about food production on a mass scale, whatever it is and wherever it happens, and in our global society we have a collective responsibility for this.
I’ll be sticking to my Vegan choice for the time being, because I have strong concerns about animal welfare, whether in the slaughterhouses of Romania or an organic farm in the Cotswolds, and there is proper, statistical evidence that we all need to cut down our meat and dairy consumption for both health and environmental reasons. I would really like, however, to be able to eat food that’s locally, and wholesomely produced. I would like to know that the people producing that food have been able to work in decent conditions, that they have been well-paid for their work, that the lives of the communities of those food producers are good lives.
I’ve little idea how to bring that about through the power of my purchase.
For now, I’ll do my best to shop local, and where I can’t shop local, I’ll try not to be naïve, and be discerning about the food that’s being imported in my name. I’ll be looking for Fairtrade products and companies that have authenticity and ethics at the heart of their operations. All this searching uses up valuable cooking time, and, yes, it does cost more money than buying products for price alone. It’s not easy swimming against the tide. I applaud anybody who bothers to try to do it. I applaud all food producers and consumers who are struggling to do what they can to make a better world.
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Brilliant and eloquent post.
Entirely correct. Here in America I shudder when I see the meat in Walmart, and while it is indeed what it is labeled, the agribusiness style of producing meat is vile. Thus I don’t buy meat from Walmart. This is on the consumer. If the consumer wants chicken at $.099/pound then the consumer is going to be buying a cheaply made product, duh.
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Yesterday, I “liked” this post, but today I’m not so sure that it is entirely fair. To blame the farmers and to blame the consumers is neither here nor there. The point is horsemeat is not beef – and to say so by incorrect labelling is outright fraud! Quality Control is where I would point the finger…
I’m with you mate, the blind and stupid believe there is no way the people profiting off of them would do them harm. Sheep eat horse and i get a little laugh. It’s great
I’ve been trying to explain to my friends the general message that, as you put it, “when you pay peanuts for something it’s actually not very good”. Lots of them seem to think this means I’m just a snob. When it comes to spending our money as a nation in general, it’s all about quantity not quality, cheap as opposed to good.
Looking beyond your points about food, this emphasis has meant it has become increasingly difficult over recent times to find products in between the cheap, “Made in China”, almost disposable end of the market, and the extremely expensive, real attention to detail, upmarket end.
Well said. It’s easy to blame the big corporations – but they just give us what we demand – and all we wanted was cheap.
I agree with your main point though I will add that a lot of people are so overwhelmed by modern life they simply have no food education. It’s not fair to say everybody should have known better.
Beautifully written and EXACTLY RIGHT!
Absolutely brilliant. Needed. Spot On. So glad it was Freshly Pressed so that the world can see it.
Very timely and absolutely spot on. I’ve been growing my own produce for years but have committed to a massive change in buying habits and eating out habits too. I want to trace all my food.
This is an ABSOLUTELY SUPERB blog post about the horse meat debacle and why it’s YOUR fault. Very well written – loved it and you are so BANG on right!! Brilliant!!!
You have expressed so many of the things I was thinking! Excellent post.
According to Wiki, there were 4.5 million horses killed last year. Somebody’s eating them. Probably us. So why the long face.
I agree with you up to a point but it seems you are forgetting a few things, correct me if im wrong but my understanding of the situation is this,
the regulations you mention were a direct result of the BSE outbreak in the UK nowhere else, here in the UK. someone thought it would be a good idea to feed the waste animal products back to the livestock. was that us ? NO. it was probably the butchers and the farmers! as a result imported beef was on the menu.
You (farmers and butchers) then thought it a good idea to ship livestock all over the country with no thought to the spread of disease. The result was the foot and mouth crises where thousands of cattle were slaughtered and then burnt at a huge cost to the country and imported meat was on the menu. Did we do this ? NO but our taxes bailed out the farmers for their loss.
So it is clear that the UK meat industry needs to be regulated. is that OUR fault? NO
Is it us that pump chickens full of yellow die to make them look more natural or so the eggs look more yellow? is it us who pump bacon full of water to make it heaver? NO
what else goes on in the UK meat industry only you can tell us and to be honest we don’t know who to believe.
So befour you go pointing the finger at us i suggest you get off your high horse : ) and take a long look at the industry you represent.
we are all to blame. we all played a part. its about time you man up and admit you part in it. and while you are at the country now shops online and gets stuff delivierd to their door so dust off your old butchers bike and get pedaling!
dident mean to make last that comment anon
For those who claim that the costs of eating healthier are prohibitive…if you can’t afford to eat whole, natural, organic foods then cut out other less important expenditures so you can do so. Don’t buy new clothes. Don’t go on vacation. Don’t go to Starbucks. Skip that manicure and that new handbag. Most importantly, don’t waste money on unnecessary foods such as candy, desserts, soda, alcoholic beverages and packaged items. The food that you eat directly impacts your health and without your health you have nothing. Change to our food supply can only come if the masses create a strong enough consumer demand and we must believe this is possible.
Hear hear. After keeping a roof over my head, my number when priority when it comes to how to spend money is to have wholesome, healthy, good quality food, and I’ll happily sacrifice other things to have that. I believe it is possible.
Bloody well said. A ready-made lasagne big enough to feed an entire family for just 1.99? I’m surprised it’s got any meat in it at all. I’m surprised it’s not made out of rotten potatoes and roadkill.
small farms matter big
I live in Serbia where we’re going through a scandal involving milk contamination. The worst thing about it isn’t even that we’re eating contaminated food, and that we’ve been eating it for heaven knows how long because nobody bothered to tell us earlier. The worst thing is that when we are told, we just don’t care. We just keep stuffing our faces with this crap. What is wrong with us?!
I’ve mentioned this excellent piece in my blog post today and added a link to your site
That’s how I came here., from Homesick and Heatstruck.
I found the tone of the post very much de haut en bas….not a way to persuade people of the message…and I can’t agree with the message.
In the EU people pay for the costs of the Common Agricultural Policy which, in effect, subsidises the agroalimentary industry, which in turn survives on growth…pushing more and more muck onto the markets with the connivance of the big retailers.
People are forced to pay to poison themselves.
Remove the subsidies and the web of transactions built on that foundation.
Regulate the retailers.
Don’t blame the poor bastard at the bottom of society’s food chain because a corrupt system allows mislabelling of products.
I don’t believe the faults of ‘the system’ (huge as they are) are an excuse to abdicate personal responsibility. We can all sit around feeling sorry for ourselves – “poor bastards” – or we can choose to live more responsibly and consciously. It’s not easy to swim against the tide, but if people actually did that then the system would get the message. Our blogger is right that it is our own fault.
bse, foot and mouth, horse meat and you pretend that you care, yeh right
It’s interesting to read about similar problems going on in the UK as in the U.S. not so much the horse meat issue. But the issue of desiring cheap food. People here spend their money on things like cars and expensive phones. But when it comes to shelling out an extra 2 dollars for grass fed beef that was produced ethically. You would think you had just asked someone give up their first born.
Good post!
“You didn’t know, but that’s because you didn’t care”…pretty much sums up all of society’s ignorance. People are quick to jump on any bandwagon and it’s clear that this is what’s happened here: the fad has gone from cheap as possible to moral outrage. Great post
I must admit that I think i may have contributed in some small way to this problem,you see every horse that I’ve ever backed has ended up in the knackers yard or the soap makers and for this I am truly sorry and skint.
Wow. Love this post!! I did not get a chance to read through all of the comments, so I am not sure if this book has been suggested to you, but I think you’d like to read Folks, This Ain’t Normal by Joel Salatin. It’s American based, but the idea is all the same everywhere. People NOT knowing who grew their food just isn’t normal! It’s not normal to buy a loaf of bread that travelled 1500 miles to get to the grocery store shelf! I fully agree with you that we have done this to ourselves.
Right on, preach it. i purchase most of our protein from a local butcher. It costs a little more, but at least I am assure that the chicken doesn’t contain any growth homone and the ham is smoke cured. It outrages me that I can’t buy local summer fruit from our own country, or even our own province.
I agonize over how much fossil fuel contributes to global warming so the local supermarket can display perfect pyramids of grapefruit, star fruit, blueberries and salad in plastic bags in the middle of January.
Last year Canada experienced a huge recall of beef because of e coli (in no way connected to the internet) contamination. One of the largest processing plants in the country was closed for weeks. People became seriously ill, some died. Two days there was another recall of premade burgers, same problem.
It is our fault, if we weren’t so price demanding, there would still be family farms making a go of it without a gas pipeline running smack dab through the middle of them or a oil rig pumping out another dollar and another dollar.
Reblogged this on I Am with you always and commented:
I couldn’t agree more.
When the newspapers are full of stories of people unable to afford to feed their kids, you blame them for a scandal that has been created as a result of market forces out with their control. Given the choice, given the choice with education, I might add, people wouldn’t choose to eat cheap processed meat. Blaming them for this corruption achieves nothing but a bad reflection on you.
There are a lot of people out there trying to educate, trying to create opportunities for health. There is loads of information out there to help people feed their families well, and it doesn’t have to be massively expensive if you put some thought into it (hard to do when everyone’s trapped at work for such long hours, I admit). Helping people change their lives for the better sometimes feels like pushing a rock up a hill, what with market forces and homogenized culture, and there is also an element of people simply not being bothered. It’s pretty easy to not be bothered in Britain today. Yes, we need to support vulnerable people, but I do feel that people need to take some responsibility for their lives and choices as well. The state can’t sort out everything for everybody. I’d like to see the state sorting out those ‘market forces’ and industry practices, but I’d also like to see the average person making more thoughtful lifestyle choices. It’s not impossible.
but i dont care?
Though I can see your points, and have often argued that food is far too cheap compared with many other products, it wasn’t the consumer who fed cattle feed made from the infected meat that produced BSE. Neither is the consumer that keeps pumping chickens up with antibiotics reducing both animal and human resistance to illness.
There is no excuse for what the food industry has done in the pursuit of massive profits, without hte knowledge of the consumer. Farmers may not be the main culprits but they deserve their share of the blame..
From a lighter note I tackle the same subject here:
http://bryanhemming.wordpress.com/2013/02/22/horseburger-with-fries/
that just what i was saying, (posted at 00.54) the meat industry have been ripping us off for years, bse, foot and mouth the list is endless!
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As a vegan, I would never advocate for the consumption of flesh and don’t get me started on the dairy industry! With that said, this is a very good post. People need to start taking a very active interest in where their food comes from. From factory farm to your plate or local farm to your plate. I live in USA where most Americans subscribe to the willful ignorance stance and look to the person next to them for change.
Reblogged this on Ned Hamson Second Line View of the News and commented:
Well put!
FABULOUS post. Loving this one.
I wonder if all the negative comments on here about farmers even know how much work and expense goes into raising food? I mean, I know that here where I live in america, I can spend $100 on a set-up for four chickens, and get four eggs a day, or a dozen in three days. Those three days of feed, grit, water, electricity, etc. cost me about $1.50. Which is about $0.10 under the cost of a supermarket egg carton PRE LABOR. And this is NOT feeding organic feed, or something fancy. This is regular old chicken chow. Can you IMAGINE what sort of cost cutting measures it takes to bring that down to the $0.75 a dozen OR LESS they sell to supermarkets at? That is why hens are contained 5-to-a-cage, fed by-products that are cheap, housed in awful conditions, never cleaned up after, genetically engineered and pumped with antibiotics… But of course, if a consumer had to buy eggs at $3-$5 a dozen that would be unacceptable. That is just farmers being greedy.
Clearly it is the fault of greedy famers on an open market, and not the fault of the greedy people that make the market.
Yeah. I’m sure it has everything to do with those greedy farmers.
I don’t think many people think it’s ‘greedy farmers’. I read this article as meaning it’s the population at large who are greedy and want things cheaply. That would certainly be my perspective. If we can’t accept what it truly costs to produce good quality food, then this is the kind of stuff people will be in for for a long time to come.
I wasn’t referring to the article. I think the post has it right. I was talking about all the responses blaming farmers for driving up prices. There were huge strings of comments of people blaming farmers for rising food prices, fraud in the meat that sold AND fraud in the feed sold to the farmers. Most of these people probably have no idea what it takes to raise food.
Wow! What an excellent post that is equally revelant in the US. This is prevalent in so many issues in today’s society. It is always bittersweet to say “I told you so.”
I was surprised to learn that in some countries (Western Europe), horse meat is very common and can be found in any supermarkets. But not even horse meat, most meat sold in supermarkets nowadays is the cheapest and lowest quality and who knows what they put in them to make it so cheap. I feel like I am left no choice than start buying only directly from local farmers or becoming a vegetarian. The meat should be produced and sold locally… like everything else. This is a huge downfall of globalisation.
Reblogged this on Oyia Brown.
Your angle is certainly one that the 20% of the UK population would not want to hear, for nobody likes to be told they are greedy takers.
However I agree that the demand side of the market needs to be tackled so that the supermarkets providing the food will understand that not even the 20% of the population wants it.
Fucking well said.
With you all the way..
Reblogged this on The Peoples Republic of Northumbria and commented:
What can i add…
Bravo!
Reblogged this on 2012 And All That… The Fight Against Nonsense and commented:
Can’t really argue with any of this. I know this is stretching the boundaries of what this blog is about, but I guess it is – in a round about sort of way – that we have all come to expect something for nothing, by convincing ourselves that cheap food can still be ethical and high quality.
That’s nonsense because something has to give.
The increase in meat consumption has been crazy. It’s become the norm to buy so much meat for so little a price that anything otherwise seems unfair to the buyer. Sorry carnivores, but meat production isn’t cheap, if you can’t afford it then unfortunately you’re going to have to resort to vegetables and grains (that are actually just as if not more appetizing if you cook it right), otherwise accept that something like this was bound to happen. Moderation is key, and choose quality over quantity, always.
You are totally right. It is time to stop pointing fingers and take our own responsibilities.
oh my i don’t think Ive read anything this pretentious ever!!! Yay for the loons on the interweb..while carving you’re throne..i may stop to have a cheeseburger..hold the horse.
Thank-you for this article! The more informed we are the better chance we have to make better choices. We all own our own choices, aware or unaware. Look forward to more posts like this.
You hit the nail so hard on the head its halfway down into the core of the Earth. I appreciate every word. You and I have to do something together. The article kicks ass. Very happy that I read your words. Damm this is good. Thanks man.
Rob
It’s not my fault, I’ve been veggie for nearly 30 years. Blame the greedy meat eaters.
Very well written.
I have lived in Britain for over three years now. Originally coming from Lithuania, a country whose citizens are hard pressed with every day bills and the upkeep of a family. But whose citizens have learned to work with what they have, and look into things; I was very shocked in my first year, and still am, how much consumerism there is in this country. How little everyone cares what they put into their bodies, and how much goes to waste.
And frankly, I think the people of Great Britain needed this shock. Perhaps they need to be a little more tight pressed, so that they would learn the value of things like their parents and grandparents did decades ago.
Well said, Aglo. Our country needs the eyes of those with a different perspective to help us shape up.
Are these logical deductions?
1) As a consequence of govt activity in the form of regulations in the UK, farmers trying to compete with other markets went to cheaper feeds….BSE resulted.
2) Local meat producers in the UK have had to increase prices to meet all the govt enforced laws and rules, so the result of that was cheaper foods imports have been able to enter the British market from areas where there are less govt rules.
I’d love to know what factory farms do open days (that’s where 80+% of your meat comes from). Usually you’d have to go undercover to get a look in there. Some great points made in this article. Many are completely detached from the realities of what they’re eating and feeding their kids. Expensive meat? Eat more veggies, beans and lentils. Won’t kills you.
Reblogged this on Maddi At Uni and commented:
Couldn’t agree more with this blog – couldn’t have said it better myself! Buy British, and buy quality!
“They shoot horses, don’t they?”
However, it delivers a lot of reactions!
And what’s the point with horsemeat? I love it!
In Holland there will be a new battle show coming on the telly:
“Eat a horse”. I’m curious about it.
Bey!
Prakkie
I felt sick when I read about the IKEA meatballs, we had them for dinner last Friday. We are being told that Australian meatballs are fine, but I don’t believe any of it. It’s so tempting to to go back to just growing what we can in our own gardens, or having community share gardens. There are just too many of us on this planet these days, and companies will bog us up with whatever they can get their hands on.
Reblogged this on Anniken Binz and commented:
to the point!
Brilliant post! People needed to hear a few ‘home truths’…
You said a mouthful! A delicious mouthful! I gave up eating ANYTHING that takes care of its young (sorry fish and chickens….but I may leave you next…) years ago, so I am just one, but I feed many, and if each of us in charge of dinner, would really THINK about our food and where it comes from before we put it in our mouth, well….it would be a wonderful thing!
Great post! Keep telling it like it is!
Awesome comment and love the word “think’!
Reblogged this on anthonyvenable110.
are you positive about this?
Just what I’ve been thinking since this whole thing has blown up – pay peanuts, get monkeys or in this case horse. I gave up supermarket meat years ago, and I’m lucky in that I have a butcher where I can get good meat, even horse meat if I wanted to. Yes it might cost some more than from the supermarket, but I can buy it less often if I don’t want to spend the money. And sometimes the cheaper cuts I can get from my butcher are just what’s needed and turn into delicious dishes. We do need to somehow abandon the idea that cheap=good, because it really isn’t for anyone.
Love this, such a fantastic point, and fantastically written. This is a point my dad makes everyday he hears something relating to the whole ‘Horse Meat Scandal’. At the end of the day it all comes down to supply and demand, if everyone demanded large corporations only sold local (or even just UK) meat, no one would be in this mess. Yes people have little money to live on but it’s about being clever with that, not paying peanuts for ‘beef’ then being outraged. Hopefully some good will finally come out of this mess.
(actually a reply to Cate’s later comment, but that won’t fit): “if the meat was British then why was it being packed/ labelled in Romania,”
The Tesco meat was actually being packaged and labelled in Ireland. It seems to have been a sort of Chinese whispers: the Irish company was supposed to be making Tesco’s burgers from UK/Irish mince, but seem to have substituted cheaper mince from mainland Europe (France/Netherlands/Belgium). That mince in turn was bulked out using cheaper non-beef meat, i.e. horse meat, which had been originally butchered and sold as horse meat in Romania.
The sad thing is, Tesco and its customers WERE actually insisting on and paying for British/Irish beef – but being ripped off by the Irish company.
On the bright side, it does seem the meat is bute-free and fit for human consumption. I’m still a bit wary of Iceland after their boss announced they “don’t test the meat for hedgehog either” – but I for one don’t care whether the meat came from a cow or a horse as long as it’s safe to eat and edible quality. (It should, of course, be honestly labelled – but safe food mislabelled is a heck of a lot better than the food actually being harmful.)
If we raise the question whom to blame, we should blame everybody from those who ordered the slaughter to those who offered the product for sale. This is only a case among many cases we are been deceived in this new era of life in which money plays the major role. Anyhow, the article was fantastic and to the point. I like the style.
“we should blame everybody from those who ordered the slaughter” – why? The slaughter of the horses in question was fine: the issue is not that the horses were killed and sold as meat, that was entirely legitimate as far as we know: the failing came later in the process, when one kind of meat was mislabelled as being another, more expensive, kind – really no different from the Indian restaurants near here caught last year selling beef curries as being lamb, apart from the scale.
Cate suggests we demand companies sell only UK meat: the problem with that is that the horse meat in Tesco burgers was not just labelled as being beef, but British/Irish beef. They had a contract saying “make the mince out of cows from British/Irish farms only” – and the ‘British’ bit got ignored along with the ‘beef’ bit.
Personally, I’d have liked to see the horse meat on sale here properly labelled as a cheaper alternative to beef, like it is in other countries.
I agree that packaging was a major issue. I suppose I just have a bit of an issue when it comes to where the meat comes from. I’ve seen too many farmers livelihoods ruined by supermarkets refusing to take a hit to their margins for the sake of good British meat. I agree with you jas88 that there’s no issue with selling horse meat aslong as its not pumped full of drugs that can cause harm, and labelled as what it is.
Speaking of restaurants cutting corners on food, a Chinese near here was selling horse and dog meat off as chicken and pork and beef.
I’m aware I didn’t make my point entirely clear in the begguining, if the meat was British then why was it being packed/ labelled in Romania, I just kinda think a little self sufficiently wouldn’t go a miss in the Uk at the moment. Sure there are plenty of people in need of the work.
Absolutely true. My family are farmers and went out of business a few years ago, thanks to being squeezed so hard by big business.
Absolutely true. My family are farmers and went out of business a few years ago, thanks to being squeezed so hard by big business.
Reblogged this on Shxts and Giggles and commented:
Totally agree, I have had enough of people moaning about the horse meat in their food. If they pay that price, what did they think they were getting?! People always questioned it or joked about it going ‘its probably not even real meat’ and now it’s come to light that it isn’t, everyone is getting up on their high horse about it, (eeheheh, get it?) I’m only 20 and I buy my meat from the butchers, one because it’s better quality but mostly because you know where it is coming from! I’m going to put it out there, if you thought your 30 meatballs from Tesco’s from £1.50 was all 100% beef… you’re stupid. End of.
I have reblogged this with a short snippet of my views on it too – right to the point and honestly, 100% agree! it is our fault, not theirs. This whole drama over the horse meat scandal has got ridiculous.
Oh and I also suggest for those interested by this, watch Food Inc. It will really open yours eyes to the struggles of farmers.
I totally agree with this! If people also made stuff from scratch instead of relying on ready meals so much, they wouldn’t be affected by this horse meat malarky!
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I would totally not want to ever eat horse meat!
So tired of having my food hijacked by Monsanto!
I just watched your video on labelling. At the end you made it look like the welfare standards of the animals coning from other countries are invariably worse than those for the UK. You should an atypical situation with the pigs at the end. I’m a vet student and have worked at several very large pig “farms”. The conditions were nothing like what you implied. Truth-in-labelling should include a picture of the living environment of the animal. Perhaps even how it was slaughtered.
Reblogged this on wewillcleanitforyou and commented:
Wow!! isnt that someting, after reading this article one should be aware of what they eat. The thought alone of eating Horse Meat is hard to digest, can u imagine the Meat itself.
great piece – I have worked with a sector of the food industry for a long time, and it is shocking how retailers and consumer demand force prices so low processors cannot afford to put key ingredients in their products (for example scampi only contain a small fraction of scampi, the rest is “filling”). One can only hope such a “scandal” would raise people’s awareness, but I suspect (am sure) it will only stick in their minds until the next hot topic comes along…
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Some of it is because the diet is to increase insulin sensitivity.
There’s certainly no harm in eating — and it seems to do just fine cheesy transitions and all. The people at that time as the caveman did not suffer from heart disease, stroke, and cancer are rare for them. The macronutrient content of the experimental diet 38 % protein, 39 % fat, 23 % carbohydrate by energy varied considerably from current western values.
Aside from the fact that “cavemen” didn’t live beyond 30-35, you have no way of knowing that. They didn’t have hospitals and did not keep medical records. Also, there is no way to discover heart disease, stroke or cancer in skeletons because these are all diseases of the soft tissue.
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