Where's the beef? Horse meat scam taints European food industries
Source: http://www.latimes.com/news/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-horse-meat-for-beef-scandal-europe-20130219,0,5367847.story
Not since an outbreak of mad cow disease a dozen years ago have Europe’s food industries been embroiled in a crisis the likes of this past month’s discovery of horse meat masquerading as beef in prepared-food entrees sold across the continent.
The controversy over mislabeled meat in millions of frozen dinners, pastas, stews, goulashes and chilis took a turn for the worse this week when Nestle, the world’s largest food company, found horse DNA in some of its products. And testing of meals yanked from store shelves and freezers in Britain and Germany has turned up traces of phenylbutazone, commonly known as bute, a powerful equine painkiller deemed harmful to humans.
The scandal erupted last month when Irish food safety authorities found horse meat in frozen burgers labeled as pure beef. It has since spread to 13 other countries and forced authorities to recall billions of dollars' worth of products for testing and disposal.
“Burgergate” has also highlighted the labyrinthine route that food travels from farm to table. Horse meat from a Romanian slaughterhouse was accurately labeled when it was exported to French meat processor Spanghero through a Cypriot middleman, but it acquired the beef label before being sent to a Luxembourg subsidiary that produced frozen dinners for supermarkets in Britain, Spain, Germany and Scandinavia.
In the case of Swiss-based Nestle, mislabeled Buitoni-brand pasta products have so far been found in Spain, Italy and France.
I am sure many of you have heard about this, and I was wondering what your take on this is. Especially those who live in Europe. What do you think of Burgergate?
I have some mixed feelings about this. I personally wouldn't care about eating horse meat (even though I have never eaten it before), i bet it would taste a lot like deer, especially in the texture. I can see why many people would be offended by this, especially horse owners, and horse enthusiasts. People can say it's like eating cat, or dog because many people have horses as pets. I personally don't see them as such (although I am against eating cat or dog, because I have had both as pets, double standard I guess.) and would actually try eating horse. But, I don't like that they didn't specify that it was in the beef in the first place.
I believe that all the ingredients in a product should be listed on the package, or if it's a situation like a deli, the person working there should tell you if your beef contains another kind of meat product. I dunno that's just me.
So what do you think of this scandal NSG?
Discuss.
