Shergar in the Burger?
Argggh! The Foodie’s Night Mare…the Galloping Gourmet Burger!
The doe-eyed equine substitue-husband that the righteous have no objection to having boiled up to glue their dinning chair together has turned up on their dinner plate.
They are aghast! Knackered horses have their uses in death – the righteous were happy to queue to see the money Damian Hirst made out of tastefully disposing of a horse carcass; they queue up in the local zoo to see the wonderful animals that are being saved from extinction – and fed on large chunks of horse meat; they lovingly fondle that first edition of Oscar Wilde, bound together with glue made from horses hooves – but in their Tesco Value Added burger it is beyond the pale!
I can’t understand how it could have happened – after all the French pay dearly for horse meat, as do the Dutch; why would an Irish burger maker waste good horse-meat on the sort of people who buy Tesco’s Value Added Burgers? Is anybody enquiring what the other 71% was – or do they prefer not to know? It’s not just Tesco’s either, there’s My Lidl Pony…
The poor loves can’t even retreat into vegetarianism with a clear conscience; it seems they are responsible for a famine in Bolivia. The muncher with a conscience has driven the world price of Quinoa so high that Bolivian farmers are selling all their crop to the European market and the Andean peasants are starving as a consequence; they can’t compete with the prices that Jeremy and Henrietta’s Mum can afford to pay rather than risk them eating horse meat.
It’s so hard to be righteous these days – there are hurdles at every turn…
Ms Raccoon apologises for her unaccustomed silence over the past few days, she’s got the bluddy flu…back to normal soon!
January 20, 2013 at 19:26
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SHERGAR ‘Cold Case’ File re-opened.
Can you help? Please check the
bottom of your freezers for those seriously out of date packs of
burgers.
With DNA testing we can finally solve the mystery of his
disappearance. Might even track down Lord Lucan.
- January 17, 2013 at 22:29
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Flesh that I have eaten:-
beef (including milk-fed new-born of the
species), sheep (including limbs from infant Ovis aries), pig (both Sus scrofa
domesticus and Sus scrofa) including adult, young and unweaned, impala
(Aepyceros melampus), kudu, both Greater (Tragelaphus strepsiceros) and Lesser
(Tragelaphus imberbis), waterbuck (Kobus ellipsiprymnus), lechwe (Kobus
leche), buffalo (Syncerus caffer) which is as tough as old boots, crocodile
(Crocodylus niloticus), leguaan (Varanus niloticus), ostrich (Struthio
camelus), bushbuck (Tragelaphus sylvaticus), duiker (Sylvicapra grimmia),
eland (Taurotragus oryx), elephant (Loxodonta africana), zebra – don’t bother
(Equus quagga), python (Python sebae), vervet monkey (Chlorocebus
pygerythrus), baboon (Papio ursinus), dog (Canis lupus familiaris), cat (Felis
silvestris catus), just about every avian species big enough to give a
mouthful and anything from the sea which has come my way (including sea
cucumbers!)
Why should the inclusion of flesh from Equus ferus caballus
cause me any problems?
It’s all FOOD!
- January 18, 2013 at 04:57
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XX Why should the inclusion of flesh from Equus ferus caballus cause me
any problems? XX
Its causing you to talk bollox.
Who the fuck CARES what some ancient roman called them, in a dead
language?
- January 17, 2013 at 08:50
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If the supermarkets were really smart, they’d use Zebra-meat rather than
horse – that way they’d get a free bar-code on every portion.
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January 17, 2013 at 05:31
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And what is wrong with hoirse meat? My freezer is, along with pig, FULL of
the stuff.
From steaks, through burgers, to Würst.
- January 17, 2013 at 07:19
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Horse NOT Hoirse. “Hoirse” does not exist.
- January 17, 2013 at
15:06
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One point to you Melv!
Neither do spell checkers here, obviously.
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January 17, 2013 at 00:57
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In Britain stick to British lamb & mutton: much of our island is only
good for growing grass: the only use for this is to graze it and the best
animal for this is a sheep bred to our climate & able to survive our
winters. The lambs are born in the winter [now] and grow in the spring and
summer and are slaughtered before the winter comes. This is the most humane
way of turning our vegetation + sunlight into something we wish to eat as we
have at the present time and it keeps our countryside looking neat and
tidy.
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January 16, 2013 at 19:44
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At least , there no reports of people going down with the ‘ trots ‘ .
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January 16, 2013 at 20:35
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What about the ‘Galloping Gourmet’ ?
- January 16, 2013 at 19:02
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And then we scroll down the page to find that Iceland got two lots from the
UK. I’ll eat my words – seeing as they are tainted with equine shit.
- January 16, 2013 at 19:00
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Whoa there. The Guardian has the list of tested products. Neither of the UK
produced samples were contaminated with pig or horse meat. All the positive
tests were from Irish packing houses – indeed only one sample from Ireland was
totally free of alien DNA. The EU is supposed to regulate the food producers.
What else has been added that’s not supposed to be there?
I’ve had a good laugh with the jokes today, but remember that consumers
don’t eat cheap food expecting to be poisoned by unscrupulous people down the
food chain.
http://www.fsai.ie/uploadedFiles/News_Centre/Burger_results_2013_01.pdf
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January 16, 2013 at 16:43
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” why would an Irish burger maker waste good horse-meat on the sort of
people who buy Tesco’s Value Added Burgers”
because I don’t suppose it was
‘good’ horse meat at all, but all the nasty gristly bits,
mechanically-recovered from Dobbin.
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January 16, 2013 at 15:38
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As someone who is Jewish and does keep Kosher quite strictly at home (only
Kosher meat, separating meat and dairy foods etc etc) On occasion, whilst out
and about and eating in non-kosher places, I have by mistake eaten something
that I should not have done (prawns, ham laden quiche). I have not run to my
lawyer, or whined (or in this case whinnied)or demanded compensation (unlike
some unscrupulous people may do over this problem). I’ve just shrugged my
shoulders, gone ‘whoops! sorry G-d’, and looked at the ingredients more
closely in the future. As someone with a religiously restricted diet, it is MY
responsibility to adhere to MY religious rules and not the job of anyone else.
Besides that, I’m sure that G-d would forgive me making a mistake like that,
after all it’s not as if I’ve deliberately gone to my local hog roast is it?
None of what is alleged to have been found in this meat is of a type of
contamination that is likely to do anyone any physical harm. If you have a
religiously restricted diet, then you only have yourself to blame if you
consume meat from a non religiously certified source.
On the subject of religious reasons for not eating pig and shellfish, such
foods are well known for spoiling hence the old English rhyme ‘if you not want
your pork to mar, kill not your pig without the ‘R’ ‘, ie don’t slaughter a
pig in the hottest months of the year. Some Reform and Liberal Jews have made
individual decisions not to avoid pig because they take the view that the
ancient Israelites didn’t have fridges whereas we in the modern world do have
such devices.
- January
16, 2013 at 18:48
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An odd footnote to your mention of pork and shellfish; I have always been
unable to eat either due to an inherited lipase deficiency shared with my
grandmother, father and uncle (we shared the same rare blood group too). It
also prevents me eating other meats in any quantity, but it is pork that I
find impossible to keep down.
A few years ago, some genealogical research by my uncle turned up the
surprising fact that my paternal grandmother – who was 77 when I was born –
was almost certainly Jewish; since she had severed all links with her family
to marry my grandfather and never spoke of them, nobody knew. It’s an odd
and culturally confusing legacy (at least for dinner party hosts), but it
does make me wonder about natural selection; most likely those with such a
genetic deficiency might well have died out during times of hardship in
communities reliant on pork or seafood.
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January 16, 2013 at 20:33
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There is another view on the religious prohibitions against pork, rather
than the standard ‘public’ version that it ‘goes off quickly in hot
climates’. Pork is said to taste very similar to human flesh and the basis
of the prohibition was to prevent unscrupulous dealers from adulterating
their ‘pork’ products with human flesh, gathered however. But that’s a more
tricky PR message – so let’s stick to the hot weather yarn.
In the context if this story and the apparent, yet irrational, horror
with which some people consider the notion of eating horse-flesh, perhaps we
should review our more commonly-held distaste for consuming human flesh. If
you were plane-wrecked on an Andes mountainside without food, could you ?
Would you ? Some did and thus survived. So what’s the problem, and why do we
let such vast amounts of free protein go to waste by just burying or
cremating it ?
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January 16, 2013 at 20:42
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That’s an interesting theory mudplugger. It is possible that some of
the biblical prohibitions against pork may well be connected with the
Israelite distaste for human sacrifice that some ancient polytheistic
tribes in the Levant practiced. There is a biblical passage ‘the binding
of Issac’, which some have said is an allegory of one particular tribe,
which eventually became the Israelites abandoning human sacrifice (for
those who don’t know Abraham was commanded by G-d to sacrifice his
biological son, but just before Abraham plunged the knife into Issac an
angel appeared and stayed Abraham’s hand and G-d miraculously provided a
Ram to sacrifice instead.).
I can’t comment on your assertion that pork and human taste similar
though.
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January 16, 2013 at 21:42
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I hasten to add that I have not (yet) sampled human fillet – the
similarity of flavour with pork is reported by many of those who have.
In Papua New Guinea, a region with a history of not wasting precious
protein, one local dialect phrase for ‘man’ translates as ‘long pig’ –
coincidence ?
- January 17, 2013 at 05:44
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Hungry now!
- January 17, 2013 at 07:39
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One of my most vivid college memories from 40 years ago is of a
Jewish fellow-undergraduate gingerly tasting a pie in Hall, in order to
determine whether or not it contained pork. How could he possibly have
known?
- January 17, 2013 at 08:30
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There might be a way (see my comment above) if the the physical
inability to eat pork is widespread – and, after all, how would you
know, in a group that never touches it on principle? I have thrown up
on several occasions after unwittingly eating small pieces of pork or
bacon in food.
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January 17, 2013 at 10:46
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Mmm I thought I read in a book sometime, that the reason pig was
considered unclean was that it had the wrong feet – for a nomad tribe, the
pig couldn’t walk well enough to kjeep up, and also couldn’t get by on the
sparse semi-arid vegetation, perferring to root around in moist forests.
The pigs were the farmers animal, the goat was the nomads. Thus, pig was
the food of choice of your mortal enemy.
“The farmers and the cowboys should be friends…..”
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January 16, 2013 at 15:29
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I think they’re flogging a dead horse, myself
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January 16, 2013 at 15:21
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On a more serious note and on reflection, I would not eat horse meat.
Having just had a brief re-introduction to horses and riding, I find our
equine friends kindly, gentle (in the main), intelligent and sensitive. Not
qualities I would associate with every human being I come across, I am afraid.
Added to that there are one or two of my species with whom I have been
acquainted to whom I would gladly “Do a Hannibal Lecter” if given the licence
and opportunity.
I thus find myself in the unusual position of objecting to
the consumption of horses (or dogs or cats) but being quiet lenient on certain
limited forms of cannibalism.
- January 16, 2013 at 17:07
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Gildas… Would it help persuade you if I pointed out that the horse ‘on
the menu’ would, in fact be dead…? A small, but nevertheless important
consideration perhaps.
Delicious too!!
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January 16, 2013 at 21:37
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Erm….no. Horses should not be consumed except in times of seige.
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January 16, 2013 at 22:55
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‘…Horses should not consumed except in times of seige’.
“Born in the wrong century?”… Man, were you ever!
When I lived in Germany, one of the nicest things that you could
consume locally was a Balkan Platter, a speciality at a local
restaurant. We called it (perhaps ironically, in view of the subsequent
murderous conflict there) the Balkan ‘Splatter’. Goodness knows what
meat it was comprised of, but it was multitudinous, vast in size and
delicious. It probably contained horse, cow pig, calf, cat, dog,
whatever. The final treat was a free shot of some local liqueur, served
alight.
Happy Days, and, best of all, the East Germans and Russians didn’t
invade and we all got to live.
- January 16, 2013 at 14:21
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Anyone who worked in the potential combat zone that was West Germany in the
60′s-90′s would have eaten horse meat as a staple diet of the British Army,
and RAF Germany. Horse meat sausages were weekly fare, as was delicacies such
as ‘currywurst and chips’ ‘frikkadela and chips’ and other more exotic German
cuisine – ‘blutwurst… and chips’ for example. Good honest food – if you like
chips.
Mind you, some of the local practices left a lot to be desired, such as
having to use a toilet with a ‘shelf’, on to which your ‘deposit’ landed (and
upon which, it was rumoured, your good German would dissect his stool, to
check for signs of tape worms) the ordure sometimes gently steaming in the
dawn’s early light was not so pleasant, and stank to high heaven especially
when, as soldiers will, some witty soul, possessed of a scatalogical sense of
humour and, having delivered a large ‘dump’ would leave it proudly on display
for the next inhabitant of the toilet to witness… Harmless fun, perhaps, but
not something one liked to be greeted with in a confined space first thing in
the morning.
Back to the subject. Man is a carnivore. Man has acquired dominion over the
earth. We may not agree with some of the choices of diet in some parts of the
world, being, as a nation, soft buggers on the whole, when it comes to pets,
but no one can deny a particular culture’s right to indulge in their
particular culinary vice, except perhaps when the food source is of
international and world importance from a conservation point of view.
Where’s my knife and fork?
- January 16, 2013 at 14:35
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There’s a rather funny bit in BlackAdder where le frenchy has doubts over
his lunch with the line ‘ The food is filthy! This huge sausage is very
suspicious. If I didn’t know better, I’d say it was a horse’s willy’.
- January 16, 2013 at 16:49
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Ah Frikkadellan, curry wurst and Kase wurst. I practically lived on them
back in the 80s.
- January 17, 2013 at
05:30
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Käse, NOT Kase. “Kase” does not exist.
- January 16, 2013 at 13:50
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The neigh-sayers are everywhere today.
Oh, and a lot of so-called beef is actually Zebu – the meat’s too tough for
a steak, but it’s cheap and when hidden in burgers (with Dobbin) it tastes
fine.
- January
16, 2013 at 13:33
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Oh dear – just as I was feeling a level of smugness that can only be
achieved by a vegetarian whose bookshelf includes a well-thumbed copy of ‘Fast
Food Nation’, you have to go and spoil it all with quinoa.
I’ve been eating the stuff for years; I wondered why it was suddenly
impossible to get hold of. It’s no consolation to know that I must now fight
my way through packs of righteous yummy mummies to get at it – and now I’m
consumed with guilt over the Bolivian farmers too.
Actually, starving Bolivian peasants so that little Aramintabella can have
a superfood is, I suppose, not so far removed from child garment workers
painfully sewing sequins onto the little darling’s pyjamas – ‘Just £9 from the
high street; cheap as chips but such fun!’ I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised
that we appear to have have a business climate in which food producers will
import meat without asking the right questions as long as the price fits.
- January 16, 2013 at 13:06
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To mix metaphors, the Chickens are coming home to Roost.
After years of supermarkets’ buyers constantly screwing suppliers to reduce
costs & so reduce their prices, the meat-products supplies had to buy from
the cheapest sources.
So no surprise then, that ‘added ingredients’ bulked-out the main
product.
- January 16, 2013 at 13:01
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This situation needs stabilising, it’s so cavalier of Tesco.
- January 16, 2013 at 12:54
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No problem. Had horse steaks in Spain back in the 60s, and very good they
were too. And donkey salami. which was excellent.
Next?
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January 16, 2013 at 12:34
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For the info of ‘Backwoodsman’ Biased BBC has moved to :-
http://www.bbcbias.co.uk/
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January 16, 2013 at 12:39
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Thanks John, must have missed the Parish announcement !
- January 16, 2013 at 11:49
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It’s funny how people react after the fact.
Wow that burger is delicious, ah sir it’s made from rats testicles,
eurrrgghhh that is disgusting never eating that again it’s horrible.
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January 16, 2013 at 11:24
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I’m shocked, shocked, to find out that meat has been going into
burgers.
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January 16, 2013 at 14:04
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Not so fast, mon brave.
They only reported finding “horse DNA” and “pig DNA” in the various
sanples – what makes you assume it was ‘meat’ ? And how did they get a
policeman’s DNA ?
- January 17, 2013 at 00:27
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I’m surprised they didn’t find any of Jimmy Savile’s DNA. Maybe he
spared the horses.
- January 17, 2013 at 05:43
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Well, that’s more than Olly Neville would….!
- January 16, 2013 at 11:09
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One of my local pubs serves horse. Along with bison, zebra, crocodile and
springbok.
This all smells like the RSPCA have been out-manouevred by the
NSPCC child-scare scandals, and want to bring their own funding back into the
publics mind.
(someone once told that the only way to cure my cynicism was
surgery)
- January 16, 2013 at 11:12
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January 16, 2013 at 10:55
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Naughty Anna!
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January 16, 2013 at 10:53
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Well, ‘my Lidle pony’, scoops the pool Ms Racoon !
A couple of years
ago, when every horse owner in the UK had to stump up£40 odd quid for an
utterly pointless ‘horse passport’, the justification was that it was to
ensure that filthy Eropeans who like a spot of Dobin , weren’t at any risk, so
surely there is no problem now ?
OT, but serious. What has happened to
biased-bbc ? My linki shows that the site subscription wasn’t renewed on
16/12. Anyone any ideas / contact ?
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January 16, 2013 at 15:43
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It moved for some reason to http://biasedbbc.org/
- January 16, 2013 at 10:48
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I’ve just checked the burgers in my fridge….’and they’re off’.
- January 16, 2013 at 11:04
- January 16, 2013 at 10:08
- January 16, 2013 at 09:42
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Those who adore the taste of rare meat should not pretend to be squeamish,
offended or morally sensitive….and equine flesh is low in fats and
beneficially cell-repairing. Anyone care for a Somali Pirate sausage?
- January 16, 2013 at 10:08
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Is a Somali Pirate sausage anything like a Salami sausage… Just
thinner?
- January 16, 2013 at 10:14
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Cooked in an authentic skint, the sausage is donkey-free and
traditionally eaten with fingers.
- January 16, 2013 at 10:15
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*skin*
- January 16, 2013 at 12:23
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Would they be Birdseye perhaps?
- January 16, 2013 at 17:10
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I’m not having anything to do with a Somali Pirate’s ‘sausage’, or a
donkey’s for that matter…
- January 16, 2013 at 09:31
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” My Lidl Pony” – inspired !
- January 16, 2013 at 09:20
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More like Red Rum in the Tum
- January 16, 2013 at 08:47
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“Is anybody enquiring what the other 71% was – or do they prefer not to
know?”
Yes Anna that is the really crucial question… As I understand things
“cheval” is lean and tasty, and is already in many preserved meats of the
salami genre, and which we have been merrily eating for years.
The other 71% I suspect is comprised of toe, bollock, brain and skin (hide)
well the softer bits anyway… Just like the chicken nuggits that are making our
kids into over-proteinised seven footers.
- January 16, 2013 at 08:57
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Horse meat is beautiful – very lean as you say. I am bemused, since when
I was in England I saw many restaurants advertising Kangaroo meat, Ostriche
meat, Reindeer meat, all because they were lean and low colesterol, as is
horse meat. Why are the British so appalled at the notion of eating
Dobbin?
- January 16, 2013 at
09:06
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“Why are the British so appalled at the notion of eating Dobbin?”
It’s a kind of taboo that makes no rational sense, like eating dog or
rat.
- January 16, 2013 at 11:51
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Not eating dog & cat does make rational sense beyond the pet
aspect – both are carnivores. We prefer not to eat them (fish excepted)
or, as I tell vegetarians, ‘my food eats your food’…
- January 16, 2013 at 13:38
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It is not recommended to eat the meat from a carnivore. Carnivores
share many nasty pathogens with humans. If the meat is eaten, it must be
very thoroughly cooked. Organ meats (offal) from carnivores can be very
dangerous to consume, typically liver contain very high levels of
vitamin A that is toxic to humans.
The meat from omnivores is safer than carnivores, but again pathogens
are shared with humans so the meat must be cooked, but not to the same
degree as the meat from carnivores.
The meat from herbivores is the safest of all. And if the animal was
healthy it is reasonably safe to eat raw.
Not eating some types of animals does have some sense to it.
- January 16, 2013 at 17:41
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Alan, you will find that many of these religious and cultural
reasons for not eating particular animals do have some root in
practicality. As I stated below, certain meats ‘go off’ quick in hot
places and I believe that the Celts had a cultural prohibition to
eating horse which may also have reflected how valued horses were for
transport and power, after all you wouldn’t want to eat your
equivilent of a tractor, and have nothing to plough your field with
would you? This Celtic cultural prohibition on horse may be why
horsemeat is not acceptable in the UK but it is elsewhere.
- January 16, 2013 at 09:07
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I totally agree, Anna. Nothing inedible about horse meat although the
French will eat anything
What people don’t realise is that 100% beef means they use 100% of the
beef. That’s all the bits. Including ground up bit of bone and God knows
what else. It’s like stainless steel. Doesn’t mean it won’t stain, just
that it stains less.
I’d rather have a nice horse meat steak any day…
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January 16, 2013 at 11:01
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And the Chinese who have a reputation for eating everything with
legs, except the table.
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January 20, 2013 at 05:04
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The remaining 71 % “I suspect is comprised of toe, bollock, brain and
skin (hide) well the softer bits anyway” or as friend of mine always says
lips, ears, and arse****s.
{ 68 comments }