to find myself shouting IT'S NOT ABOUT THE HORSE MEAT

[ICBINEG]

It's about companies not having the faintest idea what is in the food they sell!

Drugs, contaminants, carcinogens, allergens etc.

If you don't even know it is horse not beef then how can I trust it doesn't contain milk and hence will not kill my DNephew if I happen to feed it to him?

The same goes for toys. If you don't know who actually made the parts and from what then how do you know it isn't smothered in lead/anything else that is extremely harmful to children?

I predict a future filled with product and toy recalls followed by lawsuits until retailers wake up to the fact that we WILL blame them when a burger/toy they sold us harms the health of our children.

[TheMightyLois]

ah fast moving thread and people made my point far more eloquently than I can :)

[babiesinslingsgetcoveredinfood]

YES!!! YANBU

We can't have it all, cheap things are cheap for a reason. We need to consume much less of everything, especially meat.

[GrumpyOldHorsewoman]

It's nothing about a 'sneering middle class attitude'. My Grandparents were far from sneering or middle class and they continued to provide as much for themselves as they could until they died (all fairly recently). My grandad would walk to a bakery a mile away to get the bread he wanted for his family, despite working six full days a week building ships. My grandma would cook for her family of six on the most meagre of monies and it's just a thrifty way of living that benefits everyone but seems to have been lost. Big businesses have taken the piss out of people for years and everyone has suffered. There's no holier than thou involved - we've all been suckered but its up to everyone to take responsibility because as consumers we've all demanded more of everything and at cheaper prices.

[NormanTheForeman]

Well, I do think the more ingredients are in a product you buy, the more likely it is you will end up with some sort of contamination, just because there are items from more sources going into the product.

Buying products with fewer ingredients might reduce the likelihood of contamination but it can't guarantee against it.

[TheMightyLois]

My grandmother would never have eaten lasagne or burgers - I don't think she ever ate pasta actually.

Everything she ever cooked was meat, potatoes and veg. Or sometimes rice, or occasionally stew with dumplings. She probably ate horse though.

[ICBINEG]

Even fruit/veg seems to come with a longer ingredient list than the obvious one thing it should contain these days.

I have a friend allergic to sulphites and she bought her fruit veg in the places that were least likely to set her off but it was still hit and miss....and so very many products that didn't list it and clearly contained it.

Just crap.

[amillionyears]

I am a bit older than some of you - not too much!
But I have never trusted any food since the BSE scandal.

I always look at food,and think, I have ne real idea of what is in this.
Trouble is we all have to eat.

Cooking from scratch desnt at all mean anything is any better.
Look in your larder.
We dont know what is in there.
Not at all.
Like I have said before, even lettuce is known to have been sprayed 50 times before we buy it.

I did think, naively as it turned out, that the supermarkets were regularly checking their food.
Seems not.

Makes all this loking at labels things, and people wanting accurate labelling, a bit silly, when even the supermarkets themselves done actually know what is in their own foods.

[andubelievedthat]

give it 3 weeks and it will be a dim and distance memory along the lines of >the price of fuel>treatment of elderly people in hosp.-care homes /certain airlines overcharging for baggage and so it will go.. toys in this country when going for type approval are seriously tested for safety ,everything is considered inc. the paint , the prob. is ,imports,not enough staff to investigate same and lack of follow up.in this country ,something has to happen before something happens >care about food ?read "Fast Food Nation "

[OldMacEIEIO]

well said grumpy old horse. It's nothing to do with class or price.

If you advertise something as 100% beef, and it is not, thats a failure of the the company and of the inspection process

they should be prosecuted for false advertising, not class warfare

[JamNan]

It's about companies not having the faintest idea what is in the food they sell!...

YADNBU. Too true! How do we know it doesn't contain flies, dead rodents with fur, roadkill with feathers, horse carcasses from the knacker's yard, aborted animal foetuses, and something I have witnessed myself - immature eggs falling out of dead and/or dying chickens on a production line and being recovered for human consumption. We have no idea if the carcasses have been cleaned properly and I suspect that in some countries (where uneducated workers are paid a pittance) and food hygiene is overlooked, a lot of faeces and other excrement goes into the mix with the offal, hooves, tails and ears and eyeballs etc

FACT IS WE DON'T REALLY KNOW. sorry for shouting

However...
The food industry is big business. It's profit-led selling cheap food and makes money flogging nasty ingredients to people who often can't afford much or don't know any better.

I am not a vegetarian BTW. As you might guess, I do not buy this sort of food. But there are thousands of children in this country being fed a diet of filthy shit disguised as nurturing food.

[amillionyears]

andubelievethat, no I dont agree.
A new generation has now found out a bit more about the food industry, supermarkets in particular.

Will it change shopping habits?
Maybe, for a few.

I have to say, that I am probably one of the few who still have several local butchers to choose from.
And I have never heard of any problem with any of them.
These people tend to be part of the local community, and some butchers are also farmers.

[TwelveLeggedWalk]

I think anyone sitting here saying "well I never buy that freezer ready meal rubbish so I'm fine" is a bit deluded anyway. What's to say your middle-class chorizo is 100 per cent artisan Spanish pig? The Beef and Ginger at your local chinese takeaway? The oh-so-authentic local Italian on your road gets its food... where?
Unless you literally only eat things you or a known source has grown the food industry is so massive nowadays you've no idea where the sandwich you buy for lunch really came from.

[MimikosPanda]

I agree OP, I've just posted on the other thread that I don't really mind eating horse, have eaten it abroad before and others. That said, I'd like to be able to trust ingredient list. If it's horse, fine, but say it is horse. Makes you wonder what else is in there they aren't putting on the ingredients.

From an allergy point of view it is very worrying, we put our trust in the ingredients list.

[amillionyears]

I do actually think there is a bit of a problem about people on here and elsewhere saying they dont care so much about the horsemeat.

In the long term, unscrupulous people are going to wonder just what we are relatively happy to eat??

[TheMightyLois]

I really want a cheese Findus crispy pancake sandwich now.

[AmberLeaf]

Agree with DontmindifIdo to an extent.

I also think it goes the other way too though, I don't believe that every foodstuff being advertised and sold as organic actually is organic.

How do you know for sure though? no way of checking is there, you just have to believe what you are being told........

[DontmindifIdo]

Talking about "what grandparents would eat" is missing an important point, in my childhood (80s) it was much more expensive to eat ready prepared food than to cook from scratch. Over the last 20 years or so, it's flipped the other way round, it's now much much cheaper to eat a lasagne bought pre-made from a freezer cabinet than it is to buy all the individual ingredients and make it yourself.

This is also missing the point that very few people buy everything in raw form, I normally buy my bread even though I can make it myself. If I did make it myself, I would have to trust the flour I've bought is just flour with nothing else in it.

I've bought mince today from the butchers (and might well make a lasagne with it), I'm taking their word for it that it's minced beef steak, I didn't actually buy steak and mince it myself.

We live in a civilised and developed country. Everyone, regardless of what level of prices they pay, should be able to know what they are buying. Even if the packaging says "80% horse" at least then you could trust what it says.

[TiaMariaandSpringCleaning]

totally agree. I have eaten horse abroad and I'd be happy to eat it here. But i want to know that what i'm eating (whatever it is) has been farmed and processed properly and is safe to eat etc - that cannot be the case if the people selling/manufacturing etc don't even know what it is, let alone where it came form and how it's been handled/processed etc.

[TalkinPeace2]

HEAR HEAR

I've eaten horse steak. It was yummy. But it said horse on the menu. Not cow.

A good reason to boycott ALL cheap processed foods and cook from scratch.

[AmberLeaf]

To add, my Dad is partially self sufficient in the 'good life' way, he grows his own veg, large part of his land is for food growing, so Ive seen what he does and I understand how difficult it is to not use pesticides.

If he didn't use them most of his crops would be no good.

So Ive always thought there is an element of fakery in the organic food industry.

[GirlOutNumbered]

What I hate is the 'may contain milk' etc. Don't you know? Cant you be bothered to clean machines after making food? WHy is it so hard for food manufacturers to tell us what is actually in our food!!

[countrykitten]

I wish people would stay off the class thing. My mum is a working class woman but sourced food locally and cooked from scratch when we were growing up. I did not go in to a supermarket until I was 17!! She is horrified by the shit masquerading as food that my sister regularly feeds to her kids and she hates supermarkets still!

[MimikosPanda]

amillion I'm happy to eat most animals if I'm honest, but the key thing is choice and knowledge. If I choose a rabbit pie, I want to know what I am eating is actually what I've chosen. I'd be happy for shops to sell all sorts of meats as long as they are legally obtained as a foodstuff and labelled correctly.

If Tesco start selling pigeons and people like them then Tesco will keep selling them, if it turns out the UK don't like to eat pigeon then Tesco will stop giving shelf space to them and stop selling them.

As long as it is all legal and honest I'm happy to eat all sorts. My DC may disagree though

[princesschick]

ICBINEG you make loads of good points and I totally agree with you. When I say vigilant, I really mean, doing my best and doing my research. This scare reminds me not to buy processed food in a hurry, not to buy any junk food whatsoever, to eat in restaurants that source food locally, to stay committed to certified organic where possible and to try and be an ethical consumer too - but maybe I'm being mugged off and I'm just paying for expensive stuff labelled a certain way that is just full of junk too - I hope not!

We made some hefty life changes last year - such as only using certified organic toiletries and make-up; eating fresh organic and from scratch most of the time; renovating our house using eco materials and no VOC paints; opting for a natural bed (no fire retardants) and organic wood frame...it's exhausting to research each and every purchase not to mention expensive! We have done all of this because we were struggling to conceive (3.5 years) and thought it was a hormone problem with me - it made us really paranoid that my imbalance could be down to environmental factors (estrogens in plastics, non organic meats and chemicals in make-up and toiletries etc etc).

We've looked into so much stuff over the last 12 months and the chemicals we are surrounded by is alarming (it's enough to make you feel paranoid about everything!). It's not just lead paint on toys but also toxic stuff used on everything else, most foods being wrapped in plastics and lots of offgassing materials used in furniture / household goods. We try to be vigilant but as you say, how do I know my organic flour hasn't been contaminated, how do I know that the food I eat from the 'locally sourced' restaurant doesn't have other stuff in it; how do I know my natural bed is really any different from a £99 mattress using "regular" stuff - I don't! It does bother me hugely, but I guess we can only do what we can do. A starting point for us has been to try and cut down on plastics, try and make all of our own food from scratch, buy things in glass jars / bottles etc etc

The other thing that bothers me is the cost. Ethical / non toxic / eco living comes at an expense and it really bothers me that so much stuff (clothes, furniture, paints, toys, food etc etc) is being made using weird non-natural chemicals that could have profound effects on our health. Most people aren't aware and most people don't have the money to make these choices. I know we'll have to cut back when I have our baby later this year - it's just where we do we cut back and do I live in a world feeling paranoid and constantly under threat or feeling guilty because I can't have a handmade certified non toxic kitchen and have only got enough savings to go IKEA?

I guess I would just like to have more information as a consumer and a better understanding of the things I'm eating and the things I'm surrounded by. And reassurances that I can trust what the label says! But as you point out these latest scares show how little we know - and no, it's not about it being horse meat!