Tag Archives: horse meat

‘Fast food should be made of fast animals’ Stephen Colbert on horse meat

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Eater summarizes the latest, best take on the on-going horse meat scandal (U.S. fish are next, and, as I told Huffington Post today, if all these big chains with their food-safety-is-first traceability schemes don’t horse-hamburgerknow what’s in the products they’re hawking, how are mere mortals and consumers to know?).

Last night on the Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert took on “a story that is rocking the world of meat,” the European horse meat scandal. He goes through the back story of how the scandal spread through Europe with blame landing on Romania and perhaps organized crime. And he is not at all surprised the mob might be involved because, after all, “if you’re going to leave a horse head in a bed, why waste all that good body meat?”

But Colbert doesn’t really understand what everyone is so upset about. As he says, “We don’t feel guilty when we happily consume the rest of Noah’s Ark” — and he also jokes that Europeans are all worried about eating horse burgers “instead of their usual delicacy of pickled sheep brain.” In the end, he proclaims, “There’s nothing wrong with eating horse burgers. Fast food should be made of fast animals.” Scandal over?

Mad cow, mushy peas and horse; UK horrified by what it’s eating; what took them so long?

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The Daily Show with Jon Stewart has a long history of making fun of Brits. Last night, the crew took on the horse meat scandal, which is jon-stewart-35quickly becoming global, with a new segment called, “We may be —ked but at least god isn’t hurling rocks and loose horsemeat at us.”

The clip below, which won’t play in some countries, is fairly apt.

Today, the horse meat scandal spread to Asia where an imported lasagne brand was pulled from the shelves in Hong Kong, as Czech officials ordered similar action on frozen meals mislabelled “beef.”

A host of top players have been caught up in the spiralling scandal including Nestle, the world’s biggest food company, top beef producer JBS of Brazil and British supermarket chain Tesco.

Audits and inspections are never enough.

German officials, the same ones who oversaw an outbreak of E. coli O104 in sprouts in 2011 that killed 53, vowed tighter controls on meat products and stronger penalties for companies that violate food-labeling rules as more items marketed as “all beef” were pulled from supermarket shelves after testing positive for horse meat.

 

Horse meat scandal: Finger-pointing and false trust

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Supermarkets in the UK are really, really super mad about the horse meat scandal.

Probably not as mad and violated as consumers, but hey, we’re all in this together right, retailers, consumers, you, me – except only one makes money on the deal.

And how well do retailers know their suppliers?

In a public letter, 11 firms, including Tesco and Asda, said they shared mr.edshoppers’ “anger and outrage”.

BBC News reports UK retailers have rejected government criticism they “remained silent” over the horsemeat crisis – as they begin to release test results on beef products.

Earlier, Downing Street said big retailers selling affected products had a responsibility to answer key questions on the scandal.

Sources said it was not “acceptable for retailers to remain silent while customers have been misled about the content of the food they have been buying.”

Meanwhile, the results of up to one third of tests on the presence of horsemeat in processed meals ordered by the Food Standards Agency (FSA) are being released.

Whitbread, which supplies thousands of pubs and owns Premier Inn, Beefeater Grill and Brewers Fayre, has confirmed two of its products have been found to contain horsemeat.

Compass Group, one of the biggest school food providers in the UK, says its tests have found between 5% and 30% horse DNA in burgers it sold in Ireland and Northern Ireland.

Cottage pie delivered to 47 schools in Lancashire has tested positive for horse DNA. The product has now been withdrawn from kitchens. And beefburgers containing horsemeat had been withdrawn from hospitals in Northern Ireland.

That will be reassuring to parents and patients. You know, consumers, partners.

The French government has accused meat processing company Spanghero of knowingly selling horsemeat labeled as beef. The firm has denied the allegations, but apologized to British consumers, saying it was “tricked as well.”

Further to the arrests made yesterday in Wales and West Yorkshire in relation to suspected fraud, there have been seizures of evidence in Hull and London.

UK Food Safety Authority officers entered an additional three premises in England today with local authorities and the police; one was in Hull and two in Tottenham. Computers and documentary evidence have been removed from these premises, as well as meat samples that have been taken for testing.

FSA has submitted a full file and evidence on this issue to Europol.

France has pinned much of the blame for Europe’s meat scandal on a French firm that allegedly sold 750 tonnes of horsemeat as beef that ended up in millions of ready-to-eat meals sold across the continent.

Agence France-Presse reports Spanghero denied any wrongdoing, saying it had never ordered, received or resold any meat that it did not believe to be beef. 

The findings of an investigation by France’s anti-fraud office, presented by the Consumer Affairs Minister, Benoit Hamon, were staggering.

It said Spanghero, a meat-processing firm in the southwestern town of Castelnaudary, had knowingly sold 750 tonnes of horsemeat mislabelled as beef over a period of six months, 500 tonnes of which were sent to French firm Comigel, which makes frozen meals at its Tavola factory in Luxembourg.

That meat was used to make 4.5 million products that were sold by Comigel to d-day in animal house28 companies in 13 European countries, it said.

Mr Hamon said Spanghero would be prosecuted and officials said its licence to handle meat would be suspended pending further investigations.

The minister said that Comigel, which supplied millions of ready-to-eat meals to supermarkets, which have now removed them from their shelves, had been deceived by Spanghero.

But he said Comigel had failed to carry out tests or inspect paperwork that would have alerted it to the scam. He said Romanian abattoirs named in the affair appeared to have acted in good faith.

Martine likes horse; so do some Brits; FSA raids meat plant involved in alleged supply of horse meat

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Martine’s as hungry as a horse.Martine et les lasagnes

So she opens the fridge.

And now she has a horse in her stomach.

Martine is not only the middle name of daughter Courtlynn, but apparently the title character in a series of books for children written in French by the Belgians Marcel Marlier and Gilbert Delahaye and edited by Casterman. The first one, Martine à la ferme (Martine at the farm), was published in 1954, followed by over 50 other books, which have been translated into many different languages.

Frenchy Amy says we have one of those books for Sorenne.

But friend of the blog Albert Amgar sent us this satirical one, Martine Likes Lasagna, and Amy translated his note, above.

Sometimes when I read about food issues or outbreaks, I begin to crave that food: horse sounds delicious.

I’m not alone.

According to the Globe and Mail, specialty meat suppliers in Britain have seen a surge in sales of horse burgers, with a scandal over the discovery of horsemeat in beef burgers and ready meals apparently piquing the curiosity of some shoppers.

Horsemeat, which has a sweet, gamey flavour, is cheaper and healthier than beef, containing half the fat, more Omega 3, and higher amounts of protein and iron.

Though none of Britain’s supermarkets sell horsemeat, it is available through specialty meat suppliers and is on the menu of a few notable restaurants, such lasagnaas L’escargot Bleu in Edinburgh.

Exotic Meats has seen sales of horsemeat burgers, steaks and mince increase ten-fold since the scandal erupted on Jan. 15.

Exotic Meats’ horsemeat is sourced from either France, Spain or Italy and processed in Britain by an EU-approved plant.

Last week in response to the Findus scandal the firm posted on its website a recipe for horsemeat lasagne.

Berwickshire, Scotland-based Kezie Foods, which sells horsemeat products alongside elk, kangaroo and crocodile, has seen horsemeat sales double over the last three weeks, with strong demand from restaurants as well as individuals.

But consumers should get what they pay for; and food fraud is as reprehensive as eating ___________.

The UK Food Standards Agency and police today entered two meat premises, one in West Yorkshire and the other in West Wales.

The plant in West Yorkshire is Peter Boddy Licensed Slaughterhouse, Todmorden, West Yorkshire, and was believed to supply horse carcasses to Farmbox Meats Ltd, Llandre, Aberystwyth. The Agency and the police are looking into the circumstances through which meat products, purporting to be beef for kebabs and burgers, were sold when they were in fact horse.

The FSA has suspended operations at both these plants. Both West Yorkshire and Dyfed-Powys police have entered the premises with the FSA. The FSA has detained all meat found and seized paperwork, including customer lists from the two companies.

Andrew Rhodes, FSA Director of Operations, said: ‘I ordered an audit of all horse producing abattoirs in the UK after this issue first arose last month and I was shocked to uncover what appears to be a blatant misleading of consumers. I have suspended both plants immediately while our investigations continue.’

But weren’t there inspectors at those plants?

Woolworths, the largest retailer in Australia, got it right when they announced it would use DNA tests to verify what’s in their meat.

“While we have a robust traceability process in place, we will be testing Woolworths-branded ready meals and other meat lines for customers’ peace horse.o.brotherof mind,” spokesman Benedict Brook told News Limited last night.

“We expect them to all come back correct.”

Rival Coles said it had strong quality control – but would contact its suppliers just to “make sure.”

The New South Wales Food Authority noted measures the feds and state uses to keep horse meat out of human food.

  • The Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, which controls quarantine, advises Australia does not import any lasagna from Europe or beef patties from the UK or Ireland. 
  • There is a low risk of the EU substitution issue being experienced here, as Australia imports negligible amounts of raw meat. 
  • Horse meat is not processed for human consumption in NSW. 
  • Horse meat is processed for pet food at NSW knackeries. Strict laws are in place that requires knackeries to stain horse meat with a bright blue dye and to prevent it from entering the human food supply chain. 
  • The Authority conducts routine inspections of knackeries to assess compliance with the staining laws. 
  • The Authority conducts random species testing of meats sold at butchers in NSW. 
  • Food labelling laws in Australia require food to be correctly and truthfully labelled. 
  • There are significant penalty provisions under the Food Act 2003 for substitution and deceptive labelling of food. 

Horsemeat scandal – like every other scandal — turns into blame game

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The story is dominating local news: illicit activity, selling something not as advertised, possible links with organized crime.

Footy in Australia is under intense scrutiny as government types realize, there may be a problem. Like cycling and the Tour de France.

Like horse meat substituting for other meat apparently throughout the EU.

Doug Powell, a Kansas State University food safety expert, told the Toronto Star, “It isn’t really a food safety story at this point. It is food fraud. How could
gummer.hamburgersomeone not have known? Now you’ll get a lot of finger pointing.”

What I also said was that food fraud is centuries old, and that only now is technology available to provide data to support all kinds of food hucksterism.

I also mentioned that companies marketing stuff they don’t know about are the primary villains here; government and regulatory complacency is to be expected.

Ed Bedington, editor of Meat Trades Journal, told the BBC the Findus horse meat case has brought into question the security of supply chains.

“Retailers make great play about the audits they do and the robustness of the supply chain. But as a long-term observer of the sector, it calls all that into question.”

But rest assured Canadians, home of the Walkerton E. coli-in-water outbreak, 23 deaths from listeria-in-deli meats, and the 2003 downer-cattle-slaughtered-after-hours at Aylmer Meats: rapid DNA tests of 15 hamburgers by University of Guelph types has concluded they were all beef.

Horse head in lasagna?

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Fictional movie director Jack Woltz, after refusing to cast a part to The Godfather’s godson, Johnny Fontane, woke up with a horse head in his bed.

Europeans are waking up to horsemeat in food – some with horror, some with godfather-horse-head-scene01delight.

Food fraud and hucksterism is as old as human trade.

But given the depth, the cultural variations and the criminal element involved in substituting cow with horse, one wonders – what were all those food inspectors doing all along?

The New York Times reports that few things divide British eating habits from those of Continental Europe as clearly as a distaste for consuming horse meat, so news that many Britons have unknowingly done so has prompted alarm among shoppers and plunged the country’s food industry into crisis.

A trickle of discoveries of horse meat in hamburgers, starting in Ireland last month, has turned into a steady stream of revelations, including, on Friday, that lasagna labeled beef from one international distributor of frozen food, Findus, contained in some cases 100 percent horse meat.

The widening scandal has now touched producers and potentially millions of consumers in at least five countries — Ireland, Britain, Poland, France and Sweden — and raised questions of food safety and oversight, as well as the possibility of outright fraud in an industry with a history of grave, if episodic, lapses despite similarly episodic efforts at stricter regulation and reform. Already, tens of millions of hamburgers from several suppliers have been recalled.

Though public health is not at issue now, government oversight is, and the latest developments have echoes of earlier European food safety crises, including mad cow disease in Britain and dioxin in eggs and poultry in Belgium. Those tended to mushroom once investigators traced products through the Continent’s complex web of producers, food makers and suppliers.

The Guardian notes the eating of horses has a long history. Many prehistoric cultures both ate and sacrificed horses, and the ban on horse meat by Pope THE GODFATHER, from left: Al Pacino, Sterling Hayden, Al Lettieri, 1972Gregory III in 732 was in part an attempt to eradicate pagan rituals in the Germanic states.

Bowing to cultural concerns, the UK Food Standards Agency didn’t say horse meat was safe as long as it was piping hot, but rather issued interim advice to public institutions, such as schools and hospitals, caterers, and consumers purchasing from caterers, reminding public of their responsibility for their own food contracts. We expect them to have rigorous procurement procedures in place, with reputable suppliers.

Sweden’s National Food Agency (Livsmedelsverket) is considering reporting food giant Findus to the police over the horse meat lasagne scandal, and France is very, very angry, blaming Romanian butchers and Dutch and Cypriot traders as part of a supply chain that resulted in horsemeat disguised as beef being sold in frozen lasagna around the continent.

At some point, maybe a retailer will take responsibility for the food it sells.

The following animation is over the top, but indicative of what’s out there.

‘I slaughtered this horse last Tues. I’m afraid she’s starting to turn;’ horse meat triggers more recalls

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Tesco and discount chain Aldi revealed they have withdrawn a range of ready meals produced by French food supplier Comigel following horse.meat.09concerns over contamination of products with horsemeat.

The moves are part of a growing horsemeat scandal in Europe.

Down the road in the Gold Coast, Australia, a Perth butcher has confirmed horse meat is being supplied to some restaurants but has refused to reveal exactly who was selling the controversial dish.
Owner of Mondo Di Carne butchers, Vince Garreffa, told the Bulletin he had customers on the Coast and did not understand what the fuss was about.

“I don’t understand all the attention this is getting and we will not be making any more statements,” he said.

Mr Garreffa, who is the only butcher in Australia licensed to sell horse meat for human consumption, also refused to name the restaurants he was supplying due to the controversy it often caused.

The dish is rarely advertised by restaurants or published on menus due to fears of a backlash.

Horse has long been eaten in some European and Asian cultures but is met with controversy in Australia and other western countries.

Know thy supplier: horse, pig meat found in Irish beef burgers

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My mother informed those gathered last month that, as a child, I would barf in the car going to get groceries.

mr-edIt’s true, I can’t tolerate the motion.

We went out on a boat in Florida, and I yakked.

So does Chapman.

But I did manage to drive about half of the 48 hour trek from Kansas to Florida and back and would sometimes stop at a burger joint. Then that craving goes away, for longer and longer periods of time.

So what’s a little horse mixed in?

It has to do with faith-based food safety, reputation, and that purveyors say one thing but may be doing another.

And that makes lots of people want to barf.

The Independent reported last week the horsemeat-in-beef-burgers scandal is now a fully fledged economic crisis for Ireland’s multi-billion agribusiness – a beacon of light during the recession – and the country’s reputation as an international food producer may be damaged beyond repair.

It is now a runaway train that could yet derail the lucrative export market for Irish processed meat products and cost the economy millions of euro. The damage included immense reputational harm to not just Irish meat processors found to have produced burgers with horse.meat.09equine DNA but the overall food industry here. In all, 27 beef burger products were analyzed, with 10 of the 27 products (37 per cent) testing positive for horse DNA and 23 (85 per cent) testing positive for pig DNA.

The Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI) had last week revealed that up to 29 per cent of the meat content of some beefburgers was in fact horse, while they also found pig DNA.

In addition, 31 beef meal products – shopping-trolley staples such as cottage pie, beef curry pie and lasagne – were also analysed. Of these other beef products, 21 were positive for pig DNA but all were negative for horse DNA.

All 19 salami products analysed tested negative for horse DNA.

But traces of horse DNA were detected also in batches of raw ingredients, including some imported from the Netherlands and Spain which are used in the production of burgers.

Reputational damage to major international companies will also cost Ireland dear in lost business – even though it now appears likely that the source of the contamination was a bought-in additive from either the Netherlands or Spain, though the Spanish have denied involvement.

Tesco – where one of its Irish produced “Value Range” burgers had 29 per cent horsemeat – lost €300m of its market value in one day. Burger King was revealed as using one of the Irish suppliers at the centre of the storm. It has now ditched all Silvercrest beef products in Britain and Ireland.

Cooking tools, pans, sinks and dishcloths used in kitchens where the meat was handled must also be sanitised or disposed of.

According to a January 20 memo, employees at restaurants in the UK were told to continue serving the suspected meat until they received replacement product from a different supplier – and make no mention of the withdrawal to customers.

“If our guests inquire regarding our beef products, the team member should immediately inform the restaurant manager,” wrote Tracy Gehlan, the vice president of brand standards and excellence for stores in northwestern Europe, wrote in the memo.

“The manager should inform the guest that Burger King ‘has taken all necessary precautions to ensure that our guests are receiving the quality products that Burger King is known for’.”

Excellence.

The frozen burgers were on sale in high-street supermarket chains chapman.vomitTesco and Iceland in both Britain and Ireland, and in Irish branches of Lidl, Aldi and Dunnes Stores. Tesco is Britain’s biggest retailer.

In related horse meat news, FSA has admitted five horses which tested positive for a drug harmful to humans were exported to France for food.

 

Earlier, shadow environment secretary Mary Creagh said “several” UK-slaughtered horses with phenylbutazone, or bute, may have been sold for food.

The FSA said it identified eight cases of bute-positive horsemeat in 2012, none of which was for the UK market.

The drug is banned from being consumed by humans within the EU.

They shoot horses don’t they? Australia legalizes horse meat consumption

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Some of the younger readers – less than 50-years-old – say they don’t get my cultural references on barfblog.com.

They Shoot Horses Don’t They? is a 1969 film based on the 1935 novel of the same name by Horace McCoy. It focuses on a disparate group of characters desperate to win a Depression-era dance marathon and the opportunistic emcee who urges them on to victory.

When Sydney Pollack signed to direct the film, he approached Jane Fonda with the role of Gloria. The actress declined because she felt the script wasn’t very good, but her then-husband Roger Vadim, who saw similarities between the book and works of the French existentialists, urged her to reconsider.

I’m lifting this all from wiki. I saw the film when I was young and the desperation conveyed by the characters was compelling.

Oh, and Western Australia has approved the human consumption of horse meat.

Food & Drink Digital reports 50,000 to 70,000 horses are slaughtered in Australia every year for human consumption in other parts of the world, but until now they were not available for consumption in Australia.