My Lovely Horse Lasagne

[Gavin Scott]

Fish, ready meals; basically slightly higher-priced versions of the own-brand stuff supermarkets do well with. Maybe my tastes are a little more refined

*slap*

How very dare you. I only enjoy a hot dog on an occasional basis.

[all new Phil]

Not what I heard, fnarr fnarr.

[scottishtv]

I went on to their website to see their product range, but the site only shows their press release.

Seems they leave the fish to Bird's Eye. Findus sell a whole range of food you can trust. They've even left up the "Britain's No.1 lasagne" page. Really?? No. 1??

I agree that the disgust is a bit OTT in the news, but it is worrying that what's in the product isn't what's shown on the list of ingredients. Also, I fail to see how horse meat can be cheaper in a supply chain than cows (we've got pretty good at efficiently breeding cows for meat by now). My questions to Findus would be "where did you find that horse?" and "why's it cheaper to use that?

Also, it's clear it wasn't just a 'labelling issue' as they dismissed it as on Monday - as if they were making horse lasagne anyway and just put it in the wrong box.

[Gavin Scott]

Also, it's clear it wasn't just a 'labelling issue' as they dismissed it as on Monday - as if they were making horse lasagne anyway and just put it in the wrong box.

I agree, their website makes it perfectly clear they're serving delicious chichen, rich in vitamin J.



http://www.findus.co.uk/web/products_light-meals.htm

[bilky asko]

I had a Findus lasagna a couple of days before it came out in the news. I can report that not only did it taste fine, but I couldn't care less that I was eating horse. I would happily try any properly prepared animal.

I also had the Tesco Everyday Value burgers before they were removed from the shelves.

Let's hope the chicken curry I have in the freezer turns out to be some exotic animal so I can try that too.

[rdobbie]

As someone who doesn't eat cows or horses, I do find it amusing that cow-eaters are repulsed at the idea of eating horses. Horses are intelligent and sensitive creatures, but cows have brains made of twigs and bits of rolled-up newspaper, right?

Anyway, the issue here is the deceit on an industrial scale. I find it unacceptable that Tesco and Aldi didn't do their own tests on this meat, leaving the FSA to eventually expose it. All this shoulder-shrugging and faux surprise from Tesco is a bit hard to believe. If supermarkets insist on sourcing the cheapest and nastiest meat on the world market in the name of their own profit, they have an obligation to routinely test it themselves.

You can't just cross your fingers and hope for the best if you order from a French company who outsources its manufacturing to a Luxembourg company, who gets its ingredients from companies in Romania and Ukraine.

It all goes to show that the supermarket industry can't be trusted to self-regulate.

It's no coincidence that M&S and Waitrose haven't been caught up in this scandal. You get what you pay for. Having said that, many Tesco ready meals are now dearer than their M&S equivalents, with the lasagne being an example! I wish consumers would wake up to the fact that the majority of M&S food is NOT expensive, considering its quality and integrity.

[Alexia]

As someone who doesn't eat cows or horses, I do find it amusing that cow-eaters are repulsed at the idea of eating horses. Horses are intelligent and sensitive creatures, but cows have brains made of twigs and bits of rolled-up newspaper, right?

Basically yes. Hundreds of thousands of years of farming and husbandry have produced two distinct species - one we use as a resource and one we use as a tool. The semiotics associated with the horse are of a companion species which has a symbiotic relationship with the human race. Those romantic affections do not apply to the humble cow, which we use dispassionately purely for our own benefit, nor indeed to the pig, an animal bred purely for its meat. It's the same reason we don't eat dogs or cats; our culture has evolved to separate out the two classes of animal.

I'm a lapsed vegetarian - my family are all Quorn-based life forms and I had a 10-year period of also being mycoprotein enriched. However when I went to uni it seemed illogical that my budget should be limited by purchasing vastly overpriced 6-pack Linda sausages when a bag of 20 frozen Basic sausages cost less. However, due to an episode in my formative years where I nursed a lamb on a farm, I refuse to eat lamb, full stop. It's a purely psychological thing. It's the same for horses in the general populace. People associate horses with Black Beauty, the Grand National (look at all the faux outrage that occurs when THAT goes wrong), Champion the Wonder Horse, westerns, WarHorse etc.... and zebras, my personal favourite animal.

[gottago]

As someone who doesn't eat cows or horses, I do find it amusing that cow-eaters are repulsed at the idea of eating horses.

Are ordinary people actually repulsed by this? Anyone I've spoken to about this have either found it funny or now think that horse tastes delicious.

[Sput]

As someone who doesn't eat cows or horses, I do find it amusing that cow-eaters are repulsed at the idea of eating horses. Horses are intelligent and sensitive creatures, but cows have brains made of twigs and bits of rolled-up newspaper, right?

Basically yes. Hundreds of thousands of years of farming and husbandry have produced two distinct species - one we use as a resource and one we use as a tool. The semiotics associated with the horse are of a companion species which has a symbiotic relationship with the human race.

And yet, despite all the long words, you don't mention that most of Europe somehow reached a different conclusion despite having the exact same historical working relationship.

I've heard that donkey meat is now getting in on the act, so perhaps it's appropriate that you're talking out of your ass.

[DVB Cornwall]

The issue is more than disaffection for horsemeat. The errant DNA seems to have come from Horse and Donkey that was not destined for the human food chain. The worry being the use of anti-biotics banned in the foodchain having now entered it. Legislation removing Horse and Donkey traffic from main roads has resulted in increased euthanasing of the now surplus animals. These 'pack animals' having been treated with the suspect antibiotics.

[Alexia]

As someone who doesn't eat cows or horses, I do find it amusing that cow-eaters are repulsed at the idea of eating horses. Horses are intelligent and sensitive creatures, but cows have brains made of twigs and bits of rolled-up newspaper, right?

Basically yes. Hundreds of thousands of years of farming and husbandry have produced two distinct species - one we use as a resource and one we use as a tool. The semiotics associated with the horse are of a companion species which has a symbiotic relationship with the human race.

And yet, despite all the long words, you don't mention that most of Europe somehow reached a different conclusion despite having the exact same historical working relationship.

I've heard that donkey meat is now getting in on the act, so perhaps it's appropriate that you're talking out of your ass.

I'm not even going to dignify this low sneering attempted attack on my intelligence with a direct repudiation; you don't deserve that honour. Suffice to say, any sane person should realise my opinion stems from a British viewpoint; I don't claim to speak for foreign countries on this matter, whose morality compass when compared to ours on a variety of social and cultural issues varies from what some may term enlightened to frighteningly backward. We, for example, despite the relative disdain for the cow I described above, would never lower ourselves en masse to the kind of medieval brutality met out by Spanish matadors in continual pursuit of their "sport" in the Bullring. We tend to do our shopping there instead.