Be Excellent To Each Other

Tesco "Every Day Value" beefburgers have been found to be 29% horse meat:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/ ... -meat.html

A) How the fuck does that happen? I can understand pig DNA slipping in, but horse?

B) I now feel entirely justified in always refusing to eat cheap burgers or sausages. If invited to a BBQ I always rock up with quality meats

C) If they have got away with this, what else have they got away with?

Worryingly the same meat processing plants also supply meat to go into ready meals.


[edit: Dimlie changed as I had inadvertently clicked on the wrong one]

Horselover fat.

what is wrong with horse?

Horse meat is high in protein.

Its not a meat we eat in this country or even, I believe, meat these factories should have been processing.

It also throws up all sorts of questions about how this "beef" was being sourced in the first place. I'd long heard stories about supermarket chicken being imported from China. Now it looks like their beef is being sourced from places with no standards where anything that the slaughterhouse can get its hands on is thrown into the mix.

Remember the episode of The Simpsons where it turned out the mafia were supplying all the schools with rats milk? It's as crooked as that.

Personally I think this is truly disgusting. Sure there's a funny side to it, but come on. Apart from anything else, if their "beef" burgers are nearly one-third horsemeat and thereby a major constituent, that should surely be reflected on the ingredients and product description.

Tesco are reknown for being the most profitable of all the supermarkets. Here's hoping the backlash against them will make 'em think twice before pulling some shit like this against their customers in future? Horses are a much loved pet animal in this country. Chinny's right as well; makes you wonder what other shit has gone on?

What's next, Tesco Value Sausages with added dog?

I wouldn't touch a Tesco "Value" Range anything, and I'm not being snotty.

He's not really an Indian.

I think it depends. I once spoke to someone who was involved with a biscuit factory. They were a big brand name. However they also produced supermarket brands including aforementioned cheapie biscuits.

Same production line, same standards, but with different qualities and ratios of ingredients. The common one is that they put far less butter in the cheap biscuits than they do in the premium biscuits. The chocolate will cheaper as well.

It's the same with breakfast cereals as well. Your cheap rice pops may come off the same production line but the premium rice pops will be fortified with all sorts of vitamins and minerals.

You should always make a informed decision on what you buy. While the Tesco Value 19p shortbreads may be tolerable with my tea, I ain't touching their meat based products.

Stupid phone.

I quoted that to say that I very seriously doubt Tesco were complicit in this. It'll be the suppliers of the product, or (perhaps more likely) the suppliers of the ingredients (in this case meat/mince) to the burger suppliers who supply the product to Tesco.

Post-BSE, I wonder how strict standards are in the UK compared to Ireland when it comes to beef. It's curious that a lot of cheap places (notably low-end fast food restaurants) talk about "British and Irish" beef on the menu, but more expensive places (GBK, say) talk only of British beef.

Mind you, 29 per cent horse is beyond the pale. I don't really care about eating horse (it's just another animal after all), but I do care about ingredients lists, which are increasingly inaccurate, or have trace elements of all kinds of things that shouldn't be in the product. It's causing hell for people with allergies and intolerances. (And with this latest episode, there's also the issue of pork being found in the beef products, which isn't exactly great for certain religions.)

If they sell the stuff, most especially under their own brand, they're complicit in my book.

Good! Eating is the only thing horses are good for.

You forgot about glue.

I still don't understand why we don't eat them here. It's a cheap, tasty, low fat meat.

One of my clients supplies large DIY chains with chemical products. In fact one of their main products is sold under a DIY stores own brand and is identical to the branded equivalent. An audit from one of the companies that they supply are something to be dreaded. They want to know everything and they can pounce with no notice.

So Tesco should be vetting and inspecting every part of the process and they should know the full supply chain.

Irish beef is usually cheaper in Tesco. Something always struck me as odd about that. Surely the standards are the same EU wide.

Ah yes, very useful stuff. Hide glue is used in musical instruments. Particularly when there may be a future need for disassembly.

The British are very animal rights, to an extreme.

I really want some data on how they got to the 29% figure.

I don't find it believable unless it's a long term, criminal, collusion.

And thats not believable.

ASIDE: Horse is tasty. I had it on a pizza once.

We eat cows though, and they're either big friendly hairy things or they've lovely big eyes.

Full datasheet.

http://www.fsai.ie/uploadedFiles/News_Centre/Burger_results_2013_01.pdf

+ FAQ on the tests:

http://www.fsai.ie/faqs/horse_pork_dna_meat_products.html

No, the British are sentimental about certain animals. See how foxes, hares and badgers are traditionally treated.

I didn't say they were consistent. Though not many people keep cows as treasured pets.

I'd happily try a nice horse steak or something, I hear it's really low in fat compared to other meats, and rather tasty.

Honestly, you know there's other cheap food out there that has worse stuff in it than "the wrong animal".

I don't really understand why you would eat some animals but not others if they taste fine and aren't bad for you for some reason, like being poisonous or something.

It's obviously a PR disaster, I'm sure they'll try to fix it now, but that might be shutting the barn door after the burgers have bolted.

In some countries eating dog is acceptable. Indeed, as I have mentioned before, we are already importing meat products from countries where eating dog is normal.

So would you be happy if your burger turned out to be 29% fido?

The issue here is while the food is safe to eat, there has been a massive breach in trust and standards. If Tesco chose to sell horse burgers that's fine. But don't sell beef burgers that are only 63% beef to begin with and then they turn out to be 34% beef, 29% horse, and 37% fuck knows*!




* Actually fat, flour and other fillers. Mmmm, nutritious.

Aye, that's it. This sort of stuff doesn't just happen at random either, it will have been a result of Tesco cutting costs because they want to make more money.

Anyone seen Fast Food Nation?

To be fair, it's well known that a small but vocal minority of cows shun grass and are in fact ruthless and cunning nocturnal predators with a taste for horse flesh, which is probably how the dobbin meat got into the food chain. That's the most plausible explanation for me.

Tesco Value Burgers have meat in them?

Indeed, tgere should be checks on the supplier and it's products. I thought there had been and this is why the story has come out and action been taken?

the "value" brands are a good example of brand positioning. they exist to tip people from them to the store's own brand goods. The actual product is invariably the same. Take cereal: the frosties are exactly the same, from the same place. the value box is less colorful than the own brand box and positioned physically lower on the shelf. This means that people think "no, not the cheapest" and buy the same product at a higher price in a more colorful box. pasta is the same, too. The extra is paid forabag that stands up in the cupboard. Same product, the packaging costs pretty much the same, higher margin. Greetings cards seem to exist in a different world to this, though, as they are one of the few products not consumed by the purchaser. Their in store branding and pricing structure goes against this model.

Best of all the animals!

It is Les Miserables come to life!

With Tesco playing the Landlord.

I'll buy value pasta, tomatoes, potatoes, onions, salt, etc... things like that, but meat is something that I'll buy proper meat.
Still, a horse is basically a cow that doesn't get milked right?

*adds to foe list*

Speaking of burgers, i'm off to Lucky Chip on Friday

I don't have a source to hand for this, so I'm reluctant to post it, but I recall reading that standards are the same EU-wide and they're not terribly high, due to lobbying. However, due to BSE, the UK doesn't just adhere to EU standards but goes some way beyond, in order to ensure meat exports. To that end, said story stated that British meat tends to be safer and of a higher quality than Irish meat, but the latter is cheaper; therefore, lower-end products tend to muddy the waters by using "British and Irish" beef. Also, people have a picture of lovely green land in Ireland, ignoring the state in which many farmed animals are kept.

@MaliA: on value products, I think my favourites are vegetables. Sainsbury's was at one point selling a single pepper for about 80p and a bag of the things for about the same. The latter were 'value' ones that were sometimes odd shapes, but they were still peppers. They still in our local branch do this for spuds. It's really crazy. Everyone wants uniformity, it seems.

On the burgers issue, this does concern me, as I said, purely from an ingredients standpoint. Mrs G is massively allergic to certain things. Contamination at the factory can be a problem, as can companies adding flavourings to products, but not fully mentioning them. I have major problems with onion and garlic, ingredients that are often buried in 'spices'. In this case, it's not going to make much odds of someone ingests some horse rather than some cow, but it does highlight how you can't be sure what you're eating, even if you read the packaging, and that really isn't good enough.

Tesco's Everyday Marmite (called Yeast Spread, I think) is nicer than normal Marmite, I reckon.

[edit]We had a thread about this, reckon.

Aha: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=4951

Is it nicer than Marmite XO?

The branding could perhaps use a little work.

I'd steer clear of the Tesco burgers.

Try their meatballs instead. They're the dog's bollocks.

Silly to not eat them, Tesco burgers are part of a stable diet.

It's stronger than normal Marmite, so more like XO.

“Le process pour making le glue - ici un cheval, pas de glue, un cheval, pas de glue, pas de cheval, beaucoup de glue!”

“Oh, c’est merde pour le cheval!”

“ Oui, c’est merde…”

Poof

Perhaps the forum should buy a racehorse? If it doesn't win we can eat it. Win/win.

I've been trying to come up with a list of animals I wouldn't eat, and the only ones I can really think of are great apes and chimps, due to the risk of getting kuru. And most fish. Because fish. I wouldn't mind a panda before we run out of them.