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How scandalous is the ‘horsemeat scandal’ really?

The recent news of horsemeat working its way into our frozen burger products is everywhere; The Daily Mail is giving a running commentary on what abattoir the Food Standards Agency (FSA) is going to crack down on next and on This Morning, funnily enough this morning, they seamlessly moved between the ‘shock-horror’ story of eating horsemeat to what meal you should prepare for your Valentine this week.

Whilst Aberystwyth and West Yorkshire have waved so long to their slaughterhouses and many mothers have wiped away a tear of frustration at having fed their children horse-based lasagnes, it begs the question, how bad is eating horse really?

During your weekly shop you may check a products sodium or saturated fat level, but actually looking at the ingredients probably goes amiss. Although this doesn’t give meat manufacturers the right to slip in a couple of pounds worth of horse, cat or whatever else is lying around the farm, the actual consumption of said horse isn’t going to do you a great deal of damage. Some experts, according to the BBC, say that horse meat bears no more harm than eating beef and that when compared to an average strip steak it contains more vitamins and iron and 25 per cent less fat.

Ordering horse in some countries is as common as ordering a pizza, just as it’s normal to buy whole, fried tarantulas in Cambodia or sautéed, garlic fish eyes in Japan; the Japanese even have horse sushi, that’s how glorious their waste not, want not attitude is towards food. It therefore comes as little surprise that Japan is the healthiest country in the world, where they dine on fresh foods and avoid the processed melee us Westerners gorge on.

I wouldn’t go as far to say that these meat swindlers have done us a favour by chucking in a healthier source of protein, we are after all being conned into false beef products, but I do not see why we should be so horrified at eating a fairly normal meat that most people across our shores would happily chow down on. Maybe, excusing the pun, it could give you some food for thought: instead of serving up your average joint of pork for dinner you could try offal, the cheaper alternative that our grandparents and chefs such Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall go crazy for.

But for now, David Cameron has promised the “full intervention of the law” for all those squeezing in a little extra horse and an EU meeting is to be held in Brussels concerning this European crisis. But until then we can all look forward to the horse-based headlines that will flood the country’s newspapers come Friday morning as this is when the first lot of results of tests on processed beef products emerge; you can almost feel the tabloid editors quivering in anticipation at being able to use play-on equine titles.

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