# Has the horsemeat scandal put you off eating certain things?



## Northerner (Feb 13, 2013)

I realised this morning that I'm now loathe to buy any cheap food, like meat pies or sausages, after all this business - not so much because there might be horsemeat in them, but because the meat may not have passed the tests for human consumption:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21383362

Anyone else altered their buying habits?


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## bennyg70 (Feb 13, 2013)

I think I accept that Ive probably ate it, and enjoyed it at some point or another..! Theres burgers etc Ive eaten which have distinctly tasted odd, or not like id expect, (especially cheap frozen burgers) I wouldnt buy them because I didnt liek the taste not so much on what could have been in them..!


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## Andrew Chadwick (Feb 13, 2013)

To be honest and probably to the disgust of many, it really doesn't bother me. The only thing about the whole issue that I think is bad is that if something is labelled beef it should be beef. If it's not and is made up of a mix of different animals then it should be called meat not beef.


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## fencesitter (Feb 13, 2013)

Yes, definitely makes me want to cook from basic ingredients much more and buy high quality meat. Which is OK because I do have the time to fit it in (work from home), but much harder for people juggling full time jobs, commuting and so on. From the budget point of view, I'd rather have less meat of better quality but again that might not be an option for people with loads of mouths to feed


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## LeeLee (Feb 13, 2013)

Doesn't bother me, even if there may have been a tiny amount of veterinary drug in there.  Since changing my diet to improve my health and BG I eat very little processed food anyway.  Put me in the 'no change' camp.

(Incidentally, it would be interesting to see whether people alter their petfood purchasing like they did during the BSE scare.  Sales of beef varieties plummeted for a while when that was going on.  That time it made a tiny bit of sense, but this time it would be silly given that there has always been a fair bit of horse in petfood.)


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## AlisonM (Feb 13, 2013)

Like LeeLee most of my food is made from scratch using fresh ingredients from local suppliers or from our garden and the neighbours' gardens. I try to avoid processed foods altogether, even before all this kicked off you couldn't know for sure what was in the food. Until recently, very strict control of my diet was my only hope of managing my diabetes. I think I was probably going overboard with it but didn't know what else to do. So, no, it hasn't changed anything.


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## novorapidboi26 (Feb 13, 2013)

I will still throw anything in my mouth pretty much.........


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## Caroline (Feb 13, 2013)

I haven't changed my shopping or eating habits. The only thing I object to is being charged for one thing and being missold another.


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## Steff (Feb 13, 2013)

Nope not changed my eating or shopping habits, Im one who dont have time to make meals from scratch but I will buy as healthily as i can,as NRB said il preety much throw owt in the cakehole


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## Medusa (Feb 13, 2013)

well i wouldn't eat horse by choice but it has been eaten for many years in france, its the worry of it being unsafe that concerns me, also i would rather if it labelled beef it be beef, i am now going to make my own burgers from mince, hoping that the good quality lean stuff is indeed beef.  I was surprised that findus stuff had horse in it too as although i don't eat it i thought it to be quite exepnsive.


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## Northerner (Feb 13, 2013)

Medusa said:


> well i wouldn't eat horse by choice but it has been eaten for many years in france, its the worry of it being unsafe that concerns me, also i would rather if it labelled beef it be beef, i am now going to make my own burgers from mince, hoping that the good quality lean stuff is indeed beef.  I was surprised that findus stuff had horse in it too as although i don't eat it i thought it to be quite exepnsive.



I think Findus went bust, got taken up by someone else, then went downmarket  Or the Horse Fair...


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## Nicky1970 (Feb 13, 2013)

Neigh chance.


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## DeusXM (Feb 13, 2013)

> i am now going to make my own burgers from mince, hoping that the good quality lean stuff is indeed beef.



Don't use lean mince for beef - if you do, you'll just make crunchy little beef biscuits and be very disappointed. Use quality steak mince with an 80/20 protein/fat ratio.



> I was surprised that findus stuff had horse in it too as although i don't eat it i thought it to be quite exepnsive.



Yeah but Findus are most famous for crispy pancakes, which aren't exactly quality foodstuffs.....


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## trophywench (Feb 13, 2013)

This is it though.  You need to see the beef and see it minced preferably don't you?  Could be cow's cheek or anything in there prepackaged.

The thing that gets me - as one whi spends a fair bit of time in France and food shopping there - hossmeat for human consumption ain't cheap, in fact it's dearer than beef.  So one can only assume - if this as being done scurrilously for profit - that the horsemeat content was from the lnacker's yard end of the horsemeat trade.  Which isn't exactly what I would have hoped for by choice upon my plate.........

I'm another who prefers to have less of a really good product than shedloads of mediocrity - even though I do eat mediocre quality stuff sometimes and actually enjoy it too, cos it's a change !


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## Andy HB (Feb 13, 2013)

Nope it hasn't put me off anything.

Indeed, if horse-burgers were for sale here, I might actually give them a go!

(just so long as they weren't beef burgers in disguise).

Andy


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## HOBIE (Feb 13, 2013)

I dont eat much beef. Normaly pork & lamb. But it does make you think ?


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## StephenM (Feb 14, 2013)

Can't say it has as I never buy cheap burgers, sausages or ready meals (only M+S or similar). I suspect the horse meat is probably the best bit of economy burgers and sausages!


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## Northerner (Feb 14, 2013)

StephenM said:


> Can't say it has as I never buy cheap burgers, sausages or ready meals (only M+S or similar). I suspect the horse meat is probably the best bit of economy burgers and sausages!



I very rarely eat such stuff either, but on occasion I feel like being less healthy and having some cheap old pie or whatever  The thing that concerns me is that, although the govt. are claiming there is no danger to heath, how can they know this if they don't know the source of the horsemeat or how those horses might have been kept - they could be diseased old nags for all we know, and most likely are as it's not going to be profitable to use best quality thoroughbreds for this type of scam


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## megga (Feb 14, 2013)

I have some iceland burgers in my freezer, and i know they have horse in them, (my son, daughter, sister and brother inlaw work for them) but i will still eat them. We are all gonna die any way, so lets do it with a full tummy and no worries.


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## tejbat6 (Feb 14, 2013)

*horse meat scandal*

brought up on a farm, when hosses pulled things, ducks went quack, and the butcher came round a couple of times a year to `sort` the wee piggies out, home made sausages etc.
Never been too fond of meat of any kind. 
Over the years have discovered the lengths firms go to to utilise `the whole animal`, and the methods used
I have a constant "beef" with my wife of 48 yrs over processed meat of any kind. The last few years a mouthful of the stuff has been too much. I now leave it on the plate.
Horse in your pasties etc, is only the tip of an iceberg big enough to sink hundreds of Titanics several times over
But if you enjoy meat, then keep eating it, its your choice
The missus came home many years ago in a very upset state. She loves pigs. The firm she was temping at was a farm feed supplier. She could not believe the stuff that went into the mix for, chickens, sheep, cattle and pigs.
All I could say was ...told you so!!
By THe way, I still like a nice, well done steak on a night out
and I used to eat the cow cake at milking time


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## Doddy (Feb 14, 2013)

For the last few years now I have struggled to eat meat.  If I think about where it comes from, what could possibly be in it, then I can't eat it.  The horsemeat business has totally turned me off eating meat, and I don't even want to give meat to my kids anymore...I have practically been a vegetarian this week, doing all I can to avoid meat.  When it all dies down again, and I stop thinking quite so much about contents etc, then I might face eating meat again, but until then, I am quite happy to avoid it.
I disagree with being sold one thing, and it possibly containing something else.   It hasn't killed me yet, so is that much of a problem...no, but pyschologically, for me, it's a huge problem!
So yes, I have changed my habits this last couple of weeks, but it is helping wonderfully with my diet!!!  Takeaways are completely off the menu!


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## Northerner (Feb 14, 2013)

Doddy said:


> For the last few years now I have struggled to eat meat.  If I think about where it comes from, what could possibly be in it, then I can't eat it.  The horsemeat business has totally turned me off eating meat, and I don't even want to give meat to my kids anymore...I have practically been a vegetarian this week, doing all I can to avoid meat.  When it all dies down again, and I stop thinking quite so much about contents etc, then I might face eating meat again, but until then, I am quite happy to avoid it.
> I disagree with being sold one thing, and it possibly containing something else.   It hasn't killed me yet, so is that much of a problem...no, but pyschologically, for me, it's a huge problem!
> So yes, I have changed my habits this last couple of weeks, but it is helping wonderfully with my diet!!!  Takeaways are completely off the menu!



After a lot of the food scares in the early noughties I went vegetarian for 2 years!


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## Tina63 (Feb 15, 2013)

Meat-wise I haven't changed anything thus far, half thinking that we are all bound to have eaten some unknowingly already anyway somewhere along the line, and also as my lad pointed out, horsemeat is probably far more healthy and less fatty than beef anyway.  I do hear what people are saying though that this could have come from some old diseased nag, so it won't be prime Neddy.

However, on the veg front, my friend tells me a programme was on a couple of weeks ago, one of these documentary food shows, which would put you off eating carrots for the rest of your life :O  So it seems we are all doomed.  EVERYTHING these days is genetically modified, treated with pesticides, hormones, goodness knows what, and more and more I think there is no escape from it all.  Even our drinking water has so much added to it.  Even if you buy organic, what's to say the worms and slugs around it haven't crawled from a neighbouring field having munched their way through a load of genetically modified cabbages first?

Where does the jelly come from in Jelly Babies?  Could that be gelatine based?  Wasn't that all a bit of a scandal in the BSE crisis?  (Or is my addled brain letting me down here?)   As I said, it goes on and on and on..........


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## mcdonagh47 (Feb 15, 2013)

Northerner said:


> I realised this morning that I'm now loathe to buy any cheap food, like meat pies or sausages, after all this business - not so much because there might be horsemeat in them, but because the meat may not have passed the tests for human consumption:
> 
> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21383362
> 
> Anyone else altered their buying habits?



I'm sticking to Soylent Green 

I love salami which contains a lot of donkey it seems. But that is known with no pretence about it.

We buy meat at Costco and it always looks good quality and is often American I believe.

Morrisons have been advertising their BRITISH meat credentials, "we own the abbatoirs and processing plants", they claim but when you look at their beef a lot of it is Australian and a lot is Irish.

M&S have said nowt yet have they ? Iceland, Farm foods etc ?

Does the Co-op still own its own farms ?


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## HelenM (Feb 15, 2013)

> Does the Co-op still own its own farms ?


don't know but  the company that 'owns' Spanghero is   supposed to be a cooperative (Lur Berri) .
 They have farmers that are part of it but  it is still a multibillion business selling  a wide variety of products from red label beef, pork and lamb (supposed to be high quality, single breed etc), to foie gras , to smoked salmon (they have a fish processing/distribution dept in Warminster) to  DIY (M Bricolage).
http://www.lurberri.fr/WPages/NosMetiers.aspx
It does demonstrate to me the size and influence of these big outfits, not quite the big global players but huge all the same.

I could buy my meat from local butchers that display the animal number and farm it's produced at. Like most people though cost is a consideration.


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## AlisonM (Feb 15, 2013)

HelenM said:


> .../I could buy my meat from local butchers that display the animal number and farm it's produced at. Like most people though cost is a consideration.


That's what I do. The butcher's shop I use has been in business for a century now, uses local suppliers and has a sterling reputation. Oh, and my granny used to shop there. I'd rather buy a small amount if something decent than a large pile of unidentifiable c**p.


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## megga (Feb 15, 2013)

I do a spot of fishing, (trout) and do a bit of hunting, rabbit, hare and pigeon (i help a farmer control the pests). I eat what i catch and shoot, and for a couple of years people have called me desgusting. But at least i know the pray has had a good life, is fresh and i know what i am eating. Saying that its very low in fat as well.


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## Northerner (Feb 15, 2013)

megga said:


> I do a spot of fishing, (trout) and do a bit of hunting, rabbit, hare and pigeon (i help a farmer control the pests). I eat what i catch and shoot, and for a couple of years people have called me desgusting. But at least i know the pray has had a good life, is fresh and i know what i am eating. Saying that its very low in fat as well.



I remember all those things used to be quite commonly eaten when I was a child


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## rachelha (Feb 15, 2013)

I love ikea meatballs.  They are the only thing we buy that I could see there possibly being a problem with


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## AlisonM (Feb 15, 2013)

I like a nice rabbit casserole and I love fresh trout. And, of course, we have a great salmon river almost on the doorstep. Although I can't physically fish anymore I still have cousins who do, and at least one is a poacher so I often benefit from their activities.


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## sacol4940 (Feb 15, 2013)

As long as it takes nice, I dont care lol


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## HelenM (Feb 15, 2013)

I think in the UK , it's often easy to disassociate meat from it's source. Even butchers no longer have carcasses hanging up.  Often people don't like meat that looks like meat let alone offal. 

Our barn and out building have about 30 rabbit cages in them.  I don't think that many still keep them for food nowadays but you occasionally see live rabbits in the market .The other day  we saw an elderly 'paysan' taking a rabbit from the cages just his backdoor.
 All my neighbours keep hens and ducks,  a few keep pigs. 
We have a yearly fete in our hamlet which though it only has about  40 people  caters for 500+ . Dozens of chickens are dispatched, plucked, drawn and prepared with great efficiency.  The first time I was teased about my reticence 'you eat it don't you?'  I'm a bit braver now and at least I can pluck a chicken even if still  a bit squeamish about the rest.
Of course many of the local men hunt (with  shot guns rather than UK style, can be a bit risky going for a walk sometimes) Apart from foxes I think it all gets eaten. 

Maybe I should open up the rabbit cages , re fence the chicken run and enrol OH in the chasse.


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## FM001 (Feb 16, 2013)

The meat scandal is driving people back to the local butchers, one report this week suggested a 10% increase in sales, trouble is there's very few on the high street now thanks to the big supermarkets

Horse or beef if it tastes the same I don't care, just don't like the thought of eating something pumped full of drugs or something that hasn't been rigorously checked before slaughter.


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## Monica (Feb 16, 2013)

I quite like horse. They sell it in Switzerland, but you have to go to a "horse butcher". You can't buy it in the supermarkets.
I had it for the first time at a mountain restaurant a few years ago though, I didn't grow up eating it.

I agree though, if it says beef, then I expect it to be beef and not horse


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## Ewelina (Feb 16, 2013)

Whats wrong with the horse meat? It doesnt bother me as i dont buy any ready meals. I dont think ive ever had any horse meat but I would be happy to try. I agree its unfair to labelled it as a 100% beef .Having diabetes i really i need to trust the lables


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## LeeLee (Feb 16, 2013)

One of my childhood memories is of seeing some pieces of meat in a butcher's window (in a suburb of Montreal) with chunks of fat tied to them.  When I asked my mother what they were, she told me they were horsemeat steaks and that the fat was added because horse is too lean and to cook it without fat makes it tough.  She never bought any because it was too expensive.


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## megga (Feb 17, 2013)

The thing in the green and plesent, seems to be what the animal looks like, Horses ,rabbits and ducks to name a few are quite cute to look at, and my mrs for one wont touch them because there "cute" a few others have said the same. As HellenM said we "disassociate" meat from its source and eating these things makes us realize we are eating the flesh from a carcus.


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## Monica (Feb 17, 2013)

megga said:


> The thing in the green and plesent, seems to be what the animal looks like, Horses ,rabbits and ducks to name a few are quite cute to look at, and my mrs for one wont touch them because there "cute" a few others have said the same. As HellenM said we "disassociate" meat from its source and eating these things makes us realize we are eating the flesh from a carcus.



Rabbit, deer, duck - all very yummy. 
My girls won't eat any of that, because of the same reason - too cute


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## Northerner (Feb 17, 2013)

Monica said:


> Rabbit, deer, duck - all very yummy.
> My girls won't eat any of that, because of the same reason - too cute



Lambs are very cute though, as are piglets (bacon pigs live to 6 months, I believe).


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## AlisonM (Feb 17, 2013)

I must be more of a country girl than I realised, I don't care how cute it is. I just want to be sure "what" it is before I bite into it.


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## robert@fm (Feb 17, 2013)

Northerner said:


> Lambs are very cute though, as are piglets (bacon pigs live to 6 months, I believe).



When I first joined this board, you had a very cute avatar of a pig.  Several other cute pictures of pigs/piglets have since appeared (I think I posted at least one of those)...


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## DeusXM (Feb 18, 2013)

There's a posting ostensibly from a butcher doing the rounds on Facebook at the moment - I think he's said it extremely well.

THE TRUTH ABOUT CHEAP MEAT

No doubt you are outraged about the horse meat scandal. You have every right to be ? criminality, profiteering, potential fraud, all have led to many people eating an animal they would probably prefer to see in the 3.20 at Kempton and possibly also ingesting dangerous veterinary drugs. 

However, I?m going to come at this from another angle and it?s this: it?s your own bloody fault. There you go.

I know, I know; you?re not happy. It?s not your fault is it? It?s the government, the supermarkets, criminals and Goodness knows who else.

But it?s not just them, you see. It?s you.

After a week of this story my patience has finally snapped, and it?s time someone told you a few home truths.

Many of us have been banging on for years about this stuff, trying to make you care about the need for better food labeling, about fairness for farmers, about the need to support local farms to avoid all our food coming from giant, uncaring corporate agri-businesses which churn out cheap product to feed the insatiable appetite of supermarket price-cutting.

We?ve been highlighting the unfairness of UK farmers being forced to meet 73 different regulations to sell to supermarkets which don?t apply to foreign suppliers, and talking about our children growing up with no understanding of food production and, more than all of this, about the way supermarkets have driven down and down and down the cost of meat to the point where people think it?s normal to buy 3lbs of beef (in burgers) for 90p.

And you wouldn?t listen. It was like shouting into a gale.

Through the years of New Labour, when farming and the countryside were demonised, you wouldn?t listen. You cheerfully chose to believe that all farmers were Rolls Royce driving aristocrats, as painted by John Prescott. You had no sympathyYou wanted a chicken for ?2 and your Sunday roast for a fiver. Well, you got them didn?t you? And hundreds of farmers went to the wall. And you still didn?t care because Turkey slices were ten for 60p.

And now you?re furious, because it turns out that when you pay peanuts for something it?s actually not very good. Who knew eh?

And before you start, don?t even think about the ?it?s all right for the rich who can go to local butcher?s shops but what about the poor?? line. The number of people who can?t afford adequate amounts of food is tiny ? tragic and wrong, yes, but tiny. Supermarkets don?t make their billions from them hunting in the ?reduced? basket, they make their money from millions of everyday folk filling a weekly trolley. You, in other words.

Until the mid 1990s, Britain was also full of good local abattoirs. They were run by people who knew the local farmers who used them, and the local butchers which sold the meat. They were closed in their hundreds by new health and safety regulations which made it impossible for small abattoirs to compete with giant companies doing the job more cheaply.

We tried to tell you, you didn?t care.

And of course, unlike the previous generation you were ?too busy? to actually cook. You were so busy that the idea of making a meal, then making two more out of the left-overs, was like something from Cider With Rosie to you. You bought a meal every night. And so it had to be cheap.

We tried to tell you. You just pointed out that Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall went to Eton and sneered at us.

Cheap rearing abroad. You didn?t care. Cheap slaughtering by machine. You didn?t care. Cheap meat full of crap and off-cuts. You didn?t care. Frozen blocks of meat off-cuts from the abattoir floor being trucked in from Poland to ensure your pack of mince was cheap enough. You didn?t care. In fact you didn?t know, but that?s because you didn?t care.

But we cared. We kept trying to tell you. We launched campaigns, we wrote letters, we raised funds for adverts. Nobody knows what they?re eating anymore, we said. Nobody recognises how hard it is for farmers here to produce quality meat at a price they can sell because of the supermarkets.

And you didn?t care.

Well, now you know you?ve been munching on Dobbin and his various nasty drugs, possibly for years. And now you care.

And yes, you?ve been misled, cheated, lied to. But you must also take some of the responsibility. You didn?t tell supermarkets you wanted quality, you just watched the ads which said ?175 products cheaper at Asda this week than Tesco? and went to Asda. You made the market they sold in to, you set their priorities. They gave you what you wanted.

So what will you do now? Now that you care.

How about this?

Rather than just moaning at MPs why not actually think about what you eat, what you buy, where it comes from? Why not visit a farm on an open day? Take the kids, show them where their food comes from. If it?s a good farm, why not try to use your consumer power accordingly to make more farms that way? To make them viable. Why not have a think about how you could make meat go further without spending more, through cooking, and thus be able to buy good, British, assured quality meat? 

If you do that, I?ll stop blaming you, and some good may come of all of this.

The culprits responsible for all this will be found, and no doubt tried and hopefully convicted. With luck new rules will be introduced to make a repeat harder. But the market will find a way ? it always does. So long as there is a demand for vast quantities of ultra-cheap meat, people will find a way to supply it. So long as people remain uninterested in where their food comes from and how it?s made, someone will cut corners.

It?s a ravenous beast, the market. Like its customers, as it turns out.

So now that you care I?ll tell you that we?ve been highlighting the plight of dairy farmers this year; explaining how supermarkets are paying such a pittance that they can?t stay in business and milk is increasingly coming in from abroad, where standards are lower. Pleasingly people noticed. Some people. If you weren?t one, perhaps, given events, you might like to now?

And when you?ve done that, take a look at the video in the link below, which details the Countryside Alliance?s hard-fought campaign on country-of-origin food labeling. Whilst you were suggesting the CA was only interested in fox hunting, it was doing this, for you, and now you know why.


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## Northerner (Feb 18, 2013)

They look good enough to eat!


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## mcdonagh47 (Feb 18, 2013)

Northerner said:


> They look good enough to eat!
> 
> 
> 
> ...


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## Marier (Feb 18, 2013)

Best thin i would say if you all not sure buy from you local Butcher s  Yes it may cost little bit more  however  least you know  what you r getting


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## mcdonagh47 (Feb 18, 2013)

Marier said:


> Best thin i would say if you all not sure buy from you local Butcher s  Yes it may cost little bit more  however  least you know  what you r getting



How do you know what you are getting from the local Butcher ? You only have his or her word for it. They are buying cheap and selling dear as well.
( not deer - that's definielty expensive


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## Marier (Feb 18, 2013)

Well  I suppose if you know your local butcher then  100%  your getting what they say .  I know i trust my Butcher  100 %  Its a family run shop for  25 yrs  And if they say its Lamb,Beef or Pork  then i know it will be   I can asure you they are not buying cheap and  selling dear , I quess  you get what you pay for


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## DeusXM (Feb 18, 2013)

The other side of it is that a local butcher _probably_ has to source fairly locally as they have to get whole carcasses. Given horse slaughter still isn't particularly common in the UK, probability's on your side. They would have to go to a particularly special effort to disguise one meat as another once

Most decent butchers will also mince the meat in front of you after you've selected the cut. 

I certainly don't think all butchers are paragons of integrity (well, no more so than anyone else is) but the fact remains that it is far, far harder for a butcher to sell a customer incorrectly labelled meat, than it is for a ready-meal manufacturer to put the wrong meat in a meal and then ship it to the supermarket.


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## mcdonagh47 (Feb 18, 2013)

yes but how many "local" butchers make their own sausages, pies, or burgers. Which is where the problems lay. Most butchers will be buying those things in from food manufacturers.
And if they are not buying cheap and selling dear they wont be very prosperous - its the basic principle of any business.


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## LeeLee (Feb 18, 2013)

My local butcher does make sausages... and to a Slimming World friendly fat content.  (Yay! Half a syn each.)  And the extra lean mince is made daily from stewing steak (I asked).  You can tell it's low fat because there are hardly any white bits, and nothing cooks out of it.  Not artificially red, either.  It's dearer than the higher fat stuff, but worth it.  

The chap who served me was complaining about getting up at 4am to cart 3 tonnes of beef carcasses up to the first floor... and I'm confident that he'd spot the difference between a cow and a horse.


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## AlisonM (Feb 18, 2013)

My butcher makes his own bangers as well, and I've watched him mince the mince many times over the years. They still have the back room where they cut up the carcases too.


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## FM001 (Feb 18, 2013)

All the meat in our butchers comes from local farms and the animals are slaughtered in local abattoirs, just how it should be.


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## mcdonagh47 (Feb 18, 2013)

toby said:


> All the meat in our butchers comes from local farms and the animals are slaughtered in local abattoirs, just how it should be.



crikey , don't they even sell corned beef, cold meats, pork pies, meat pies, Danish Bacon, New Zealand lamb ?


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## AlisonM (Feb 18, 2013)

mcdonagh47 said:


> crikey , don't they even sell corned beef, cold meats, pork pies, meat pies, Danish Bacon, New Zealand lamb ?



Nope. All the products my butcher sells are produced and prepared in Scotland and the vast majority is from the Highland region. Pies, pasties, pates and potted meats included.


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## LeeLee (Feb 18, 2013)

I figure that the key is to find a good butcher you can trust and buy from them so they stay in business!


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## Pattidevans (Feb 18, 2013)

I'm not in the least fazed by eating horse providing it's decent good quality horse meat.  I've eaten it more than once in France.  What I am concerned about is eating rubbish and the sweepings off the abbatoir floor.  I do take the time to cook from scratch and frankly have much nicer meals because of it.  I ask the butcher to mince for me but I don't ask for it lean, a touch of fat makes much better meals, same as a joint of beef for roasting will be far more tender with a layer of fat on it.

I know everyone leads busy lives, and yes, I'm retired, but only just.  Until I finished in December I would cook at the weekends and anything I cooked would be for 6 or 8 and I'd freeze it in portions for 2 (others may need different portions), that way I'd have a home cooked meal that took no time during the week.  There are so many different things that you can make, all of which taste better than the processed version.


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## FM001 (Feb 19, 2013)

mcdonagh47 said:


> crikey , don't they even sell corned beef, cold meats, pork pies, meat pies, Danish Bacon, New Zealand lamb ?




No they don't sell Danish Bacon or New Zealand lamb, all the meat sold is locally sourced.  The butchers have 3 shops and the pies are made at the original shop and distributed to the other 2, the sign outside says that everything sold is local including the chutneys and mint sauces.


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