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Tesco beef burgers are 29% horse meat

179 replies

JoanByers · 15/01/2013 21:13

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2262961/Beef-burgers-contaminated-HORSE-MEAT-sale-UK-Ireland-supermarkets-including-Tesco.html

It's hardly a surprise now is it. If you are going to eat beef burgers costing £2.52/kg, they clearly can't be made of beef - beef costs more than double that price.

www.tesco.com/groceries/Product/Details/?id=264291549

Cheap processed meat is just disgusting. Ham made from meat slurry (most ham on sale in this country), reconstituted chicken from Thailand (I found this in a sandwich on sale in the Co-Op).

OP posts:
BlackholesAndRevelations · 16/01/2013 07:20

Bleurgh. I stay away from value meat (always have done) for the reason that you never quite know what's in it........

I only really eat chicken (not value but not the very top of the range), lean steak mince (still a little dubious but try not to think about it too much), lean casserole steak, and sausages from best ranges that have 80% plus meat content. I do worry about what shit is going into my children when they eat sausages/ sausage rolls etc at parties. Childminder even gave them scotch eggs. The term "the scrapings off the abattoir floor" always rings in my ears. Bleurgh

sashh · 16/01/2013 08:17

Maybe they have just found Shergar?

YorkshireDeb · 16/01/2013 08:37

I'm not particularly offended by the thought of eating horse meat & think I'd be more likely to buy cheap burgers if I knew it was decent quality meat from less popular animals than the poor quality crap that I thought went into them. Correct labelling is an interesting point but I think in some cases I'd rather not know. The label 'beef burgers' sounds a hell of a lot more palatable than 'cow eyeball, brain & bollock burgers with lots of random additives & a bit of horse'. X

fluffyraggies · 16/01/2013 08:43

DM - "The highest level of horse meat was found in the chain's Everyday Value beefburgers [29%] but traces were also detected in its frozen quarter pounders."

Value burgers packaging - "Ingredients: Beef (63%),Onion (10%) ,Wheat Flour ,Water ,Beef Fat ,Soya Protein Isolate ,Salt ,Onion Powder ,Yeast ,Sugar ,Barley Malt Extract ,Garlic Powder ,White Pepper Extract ,Celery Extract ,Onion Extract

The 'meat' in the value burger accounted for 60% of the bulk of it.
A third of that meat was horse.

I'm not going to do any more maths but IMO that's not a 'tiny amount'.
Not good.

sashh · 16/01/2013 08:50

fluffy

They have just interviewed the scientist who discovered this. The products with 'traces' had one or two cells. Tiny amounts of DNA.

flatpackhamster · 16/01/2013 08:59

I think that point that's being missed here is that the animals which are going in to these burgers aren't coming from the UK food chain with all its checks and balances. A large amount of this product is coming from poorly regulated abattoirs within the EU which, while they are required to follow EU laws, simply don't bother.

Loveweekends10 · 16/01/2013 10:24

If they listed everything that was in a sausage you would never go near them again! Except if you make them yourselves.

Loveweekends10 · 16/01/2013 10:25

Also have you ever read up on the quantity of insect DNA that is allowed to be present in your processed food? Read it and weep!

OwlLady · 16/01/2013 10:28

on the subject of cheap meat, I live in the country and I can buy cheap game from my butcher, something which townfolk might turn their nose up at too Confused

lovelyladuree · 16/01/2013 10:51

One day it will be Soylent Green..............

RebeccaMumsnet · 16/01/2013 12:06

We've moved this thread to In the news now

lljkk · 16/01/2013 12:24

A steer walks into a bar and tries to order a drink "argh back ugh argh".
Bartender: "What was that?"
Steer: . "Sorry, I'm a little bit hoarse."

Kaboom!

MammaBrussels · 16/01/2013 13:03

This kind of thing has been going on for donkey's years

lljkk · 16/01/2013 13:11

You know they wanted to make the burgers out of Donkeys, too? Except someone thought they'd taste like Ass.

boom-boom

EndoplasmicReticulum · 16/01/2013 16:11

MrsMushroom of course you could buy mince and make your own.

Do you know what's in the mince though?

GrimmaTheNome · 16/01/2013 16:17

BSE was still an issue when DD was small...so DH insisted we only bought beef in identifiable pieces from the farm shop and minced it ourselves. (we buy their mince now for burgers etc). They do their own butchery and sometimes have certificates up saying which prize-winning animal we're currently eating. (Its never been a rosette from a local gymkhana yet.)

gaelicsheep · 16/01/2013 16:23

A few things here in response to the OP. I'm fairly repulsed by this, we ate these very burgers last night. However I'm not repulsed by the concept of horse meat per se, albeit that it's not something we tend to eat in our culture. What repulses me is that I bought these on the basis of them containing 63% percent beef - a higher percentage than the more expensive ones as it happens - and not too many nasty "additives", but god only knows what they actually contain. There could be anything in there, far worse than horse meat.

I don't like cheap processed food or the concept of it. We are on a severe budget at the moment which is why I bought it just this once. But to my mind if the meat is from a reasonably high welfare source - ie NOT chicken from Thailand or pork from Denmark, for example - then I am not too bothered by the concept of the processed meat itself. I have assumed Irish beef is reasonably high welfare - if I'm wrong on that score then I hold my hands up, but as a general rule I only buy British or Irish anything.

If you're prepared to eat the leg or back muscles of an animal it seems pretty hypocritical to turn your nose up at the less attractive sounding bits, mechanically recovered or not. I would rather see the whole animal put to use personally. As I said it is what else might be going into these products - unlabelled - that now very much worries me.

gaelicsheep · 16/01/2013 16:28

Has anyone said this yet:

"Food beyond compare
Food beyond belief
Mince it in a mincer and pretend it's beef.
Liver of a horse
Kidney of a cat
Filling up the sausages with this and that."

This master mistress of the house might be turning the family vegetarian after this.

lljkk · 16/01/2013 16:31

Mary had a Little Lamb,
And when she saw it Sicken,
She shipped it off to Packingtown,
and now it's labeled Chicken!

recall · 16/01/2013 16:36

I just checked our's in the fridge ...and their off ! Grin

recall · 16/01/2013 16:36

*they're

lljkk · 16/01/2013 16:37

Little Girl: "What's for tea tonight, Mummy?"
Mum: "I thought we'd have some nice fish fingers."
Little Girl starts crying "But I really wanted PONY!"

HeavenlyWineandRoses · 16/01/2013 17:57

I've eaten horse but it was sold to me as horse meat (in France) and I would be annoyed if I was mislead into thinking one was the other.

flatpackhamster · 16/01/2013 18:39

gaelicsheep

A few things here in response to the OP. I'm fairly repulsed by this, we ate these very burgers last night. However I'm not repulsed by the concept of horse meat per se, albeit that it's not something we tend to eat in our culture. What repulses me is that I bought these on the basis of them containing 63% percent beef - a higher percentage than the more expensive ones as it happens - and not too many nasty "additives", but god only knows what they actually contain. There could be anything in there, far worse than horse meat.

I don't like cheap processed food or the concept of it. We are on a severe budget at the moment which is why I bought it just this once. But to my mind if the meat is from a reasonably high welfare source - ie NOT chicken from Thailand or pork from Denmark, for example - then I am not too bothered by the concept of the processed meat itself. I have assumed Irish beef is reasonably high welfare - if I'm wrong on that score then I hold my hands up, but as a general rule I only buy British or Irish anything.

What you and most consumers don't realise is that the meat you're buying can come from anywhere in the EU, unless it's specifically labelled as British or Irish, and you have to look hard to check that it's British. Suppliers are entitled to source their meat from anywhere in the EU, and the quality of the inspection is dire outside the UK.

This is, of course, a consequence of agriculture being run by Brussels, a factor I hope you'll consider next time you vote. Wink

You can look for the red tractor on the pack, which signifies a British product.

ToastedTeacakes · 16/01/2013 19:56

The horse part would be the least of my worries.

Slave labour, now this. What next Tesco?