I’d call him a sadistic, hippophilic necrophile, but that would be beating a dead horse.
Woody Allen
What entertainment we’ve had over the last couple of months. The Food Safety Authority in Ireland decide to test beef products on a hunch. More than a trace of horse meat was discovered. Cue horror, especially now that some burgers being sold in England have now been shown to be 100% horse.
We have a summit meeting planned with even the UK Prime Minister involved saying that ‘people are outraged’. Call me unobservant but I’ve yet to see a single outraged person. Plenty of horse jokes and chuckles, but no outrage.
My personal ‘laugh out loud’ moment was when I heard Muslim prisoners had been fed meat with traces of pork and that they were ‘outraged’.
The mad thing is that horse meat is probably the best ingredient in your average burger. No tests have been done for the other desperate sort of crap that goes into these processed products. If you ever knew you’d either turn vegetarian or stick to prime cuts from your local butcher. If you can find one these days that is.
As my brother Terry says, for God sake put a ‘Horse’ sticker on the packet, knock a bit off the price and they’ll fly out of the deep freeze.
For much better satirical comment you should read this from Thoughtful Scratchings.
The most amazing thing to me is that people are surprised. Is it that difficult to imagine Paddy (for example) leading his old nag up to the processing plant and getting 20 quid for him?
Jim Fitzgerald and Shergar
The chances are though that the racehorse Shergar didn’t end up in our burgers. The English Daily Mail, reminds us that it is 30 years that the Irish-bred champion racehorse was kidnapped from the Ballymanny Stud in Kildare. At gunpoint his trainer Jim Fitzgerald led the horse into a trailer and he was driven away. Of course it was the brave lads of the IRA doing a bit of fundraising.
Ransoms were demanded, but with a 35-man syndicate it was impossible. The noble beast became more trouble than he was worth and, according to ‘sources’ he was machine-gunned to death soon afterwards. 
For a while afterwards every bone dug up in the Irish countryside was rumoured to be that of Shergar. However his remains have never been found. Another ‘source’ says that they are buried along the Longford/Leitrim border and, if ever found, the insurance company faces a big pay-out to the syndicate.
Back On The Rock 
What timing you have, Roy: I was literally just hearing about the horse meat on the radio this morning. Now, I’ve been a vegetarian for the past 6 years, but I’d be curious to find out if I could taste the difference in a 100% horse meat burger. I’ve always had very discerning taste buds (for all that I have a strange inability to actually identify specific flavours by name).
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I imagine all burgers are flavoured and seasoned to within an inch of their lives, so that horse, squirrel and polecat all taste identical 🙂 Happily I’m not a fan of ready meals so I’d probably test negative for horse.
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I wouldn’t notice the difference (having said that, I’ve never bought pre-packaged burgers but I could imagine they would all taste like wet cardboard no matter what the ingredients!)
I just love what makes the ‘news’ these days! 😉
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Indeed, though I’ve been known to submit to the lazy option on occasion.
Another thing that made me laugh is the way that the British/Irish companies involved were typically quick to point the finger at Johnny Foreigner instead of just admitting they f*cked up.
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I would be angry about it because I want to know what is in my food–a label should be accurate. I haven’t eaten ground “beef” (assuming it’s beef) since watching “Food, Inc.” a few years ago.
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Of course that’s more to the point. If the controls are lacking then anything could be getting into the food chain, inc. animal medications.
Was the ‘Food Inc’ thing bad then?
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So I am going to go all serious on you. Horse, cow, pig what’s the diff I am at the point I can’t tell what’s real corn any more. I am so disgusted with our need to be instantly gratified that we are now genetically modifying our vegetables. I challenge you to find the four foot tall amber waves of grain your grandparents use to call wheat. My ex-husband is 5’9″ my son is 6′, it’s not in the DNA , or the milkman; it’s in the chicken. 🙂
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Damn, just when I was stocking up on chicken instead of burgers 🙂 I’m afraid this townie is behind on GM tendencies but sure wouldn’t the clever people in charge have it all under control?
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