The Neighs have it

[nineveh_uk]

So who else is looking askance at anything in the freezer that might be considered in the slightest bit processed? It's not that I object to eating horse meat. I have eaten horse in the past. I just think that it should be (a) labelled horse, and not pork or beef, and (b) have been passed fit for human consumption. The food industry: showing that self-regulation doesn't work since the dawn of time.

I am supposed to be doing some tidying/sorting out/getting rid of books I really don't need. You can guess how well that's going.

Comments

[tree_and_leaf]

I'm certainly relieved that our college catering department took the decision last year to get their meat from local butchers. Given the budget they're on, that's meant a lot of meals that have been bulked out with mushrooms or lentils, but that's infinitely preferable to possibly-not-fit-for-consumption horse.

Also, not having a functional freezer cabinet suddenly seems like a blessing.

[nineveh_uk]

There are limits to what can go wrong with lentils.

I ony have M&S pork sausages and a Pieminster pie, but...

[white_hart]

I'm quite glad that we only have home-made bolognese and fish fingers in ours.

[nineveh_uk]

I have quite a lot of meat, because I tend to buy end-of-the discounted cuts and freeze them, but at least it is in recognisable chunks.

[white_hart]

We stopped doing that because we never remembered to take things out in time to cook them, though I like the idea in theory.

[nineveh_uk]

I do have to go through bouts of "you must eat X things from the freezer before you can buy more".

[tree_and_leaf]

I think you're probably all right with those, but I don't blame you for looking sideways at them...

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

We do have processed meat products in the freezer, but (as far as I can think) none that profess to include beef, and none that come from supermarkets or large processors.

And yes, I think I probably can guess!

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I will be looking into where Pieminster source their beef... The M&S posh pork sausages are probably all right.

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

Good point; we sometimes have Pieminister pies!

[antisoppist.livejournal.com]

I've just fed everyone Tesco sausages without thinking about it although I did look dubiously at the lamb mince. I may have got that the wrong way round. I am also earwormed by Master of the House - stick it in the mincer and pretend it's beef.

There are no books that you really don't need. Sorted.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I think lamb mince should be OK (she says, looking at the freezer), because (a) it will be British or New Zealand, so the supply chain is much clearer, and (b) it both looks and smells distinctive.

(I am slightly wincing at how grim a lasagna must be before it can be 100% horse and you still can't taste that it isn't beef.)

Ed. Fine. Then you can take the random Sheikh romance and Little Book of Feng Shui. I am feeling quite pleased I hadn't actually got rid of the Susan Howatch one, so I can chuck Jon Darrow and gain two shelf-inches.

[azdak.livejournal.com]

I'm ashamed to say that I really like the taste of horsemeat. You can get it innabun from the sausage stand outside the West station and I have occasionally succumbed while waiting for a tram on a cold night because it is just that good. But this isn't dodgy horsemeat from God knows where, this is from horses that have a special pass indicating that they have not been treated with certain antibiotics while alive (it's always a strange feeling to talk to some perfectly nice horse owner whose pony is in possession of such a pass, but the whole meat-eating issue is such a morass of hypocrisy, at least on my part, that this isn't really surprising).

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

Perhaps the nice pony owner has a sort of moral bargain that they'll pay for lots of other vet bills as long as they get a bit back at the end...

I'm a bit annoyed that some of the newspaper focus seems to be so much on "It's horse! Why do we have this cultural taboo?" when the point isn't really that it is horse, but illicit horse. In a way, it's rather good that it's horse (and, in the halal beefburgers, pork) because at least that shows up when it isn't supposed to be so as opposed to mafia-supplied something else.

[azdak.livejournal.com]

I suppose we should all be grateful that it wasn't bits of Soylent Green...

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

That depends whether the Soylent Green was properly quality controlled, or whether they just used bits of anyone who was lying around...

Ed. which actually now reminds me of that story a couple of years ago about a tissue bank that was doing just that. Compared to which the odd horse is as nothing on the yuck factor.

[alitheapipkin.livejournal.com]

Yes, quite! I'm not sure I wouldn't eat horse if offered it but the point is, this stuff is *supposed* to be beef and there are supposed to be all sorts of safeguards in place so that meat can be tracked from the farm gate to the plate. The reasons around our cultural aversion to eating horse are rather beside the point here.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

It makes the government proposals to relax the regulation of abbatoirs look suck a good idea, doesn't it?

[antisoppist.livejournal.com]

Well if you own a Little Book of Feng Shui, there is no hope for you. I acquired Susan Howatch as ebooks and they are on my phone. I don't know whether it was all the emotional intensity that made me feel sick or the fact that I was on the boat to Finland at the time.

Sausages are about the only processed thing we eat as husband makes his own mince/meatballs/burgers/shepherd's pie/lasagne with the remains of a Sunday joint in traditional fashion and demanded a proper old-fashioned mincer for Christmas to facilitate this. I am slightly concerned about where the school dinner company is getting its mince from, given that it has to produce a 2-course meal for £2.70 a head. Tonight's tea will be the pork chops, which definitely look like pork chops. Horse chops would be much bigger for a start.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

It was a joke present from my parents when I started work (it is office Feng Shui), which was funny, but I don't think they meant me to be morally obliged to keep it forever. I might get the other Howtch's from the library, but I really don't need to keep them until I die.

Ironically I don't even like sausages much as I find the concept rather disgusting, but decided to gfet over this. The news isn't helping. I have a duck leg for tea, which definitely is not big enough for a hoof on the end of it.