Friday 8 February 2013
Horse lasagne anyone?
The horsemeat scandal has forced the government, the media and the chattering classes to once again peer into the dark corners of the food industry. Of course there is nothing wrong with horsemeat as such but it is just nice to be able to choose to eat it. The reasons for the state of the food industry are many and complex but certainly globalisation and the cold hand of the market have much to answer for. Food is shipped backwards and forwards around the world "adding value" and "increasing margins" as it travels from one pool of cheap labour to another. Fancy a nice Findus lasagne ready meal? Pound for pound the horse will probably work out more expensive than last years Derby winner because apart from not knowing what's in it or how it was manufactured, processed food is really bad value. At the moment Domino's Pizza are running a big advertising campaign and all over town huge posters urge us to take advantage of their latest offer. "Feed 4 for £5 each" the posters shout. "All this for £19.99". All this? A couple of medium pizzas, garlic bread, a slack handfull of potato wedges and (this is the best bit) a 1.25 litre bottle of Coke. That's terrible food value and even worse value for money. For twenty quid four people could sit down to a roast chicken and a mountain of fresh veg. You could even throw in a bottle of cheap plonk. Of one thing you can be sure - the CEO and Board Of Directors of any of the big food companies will not be tucking into the crap they produce, either for lunch today or any other day soon.
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4 comments:
Horsemeat is potentially dangerous, not because it comes from horses but because of veterinary drugs given to horses which makes it extremely risky to allow into the food chain. Having said that, we can very well question most of the food we are supplied with.
Here a piece of information which might be of interest. Last year I wrote a report on eating dogs, which takes place in China, Philippines, Korea and is legal in Canada and several EU countries.When I contacted the executives of the major welfare organisations in the UK they agreed that it should be banned on welfare grounds, as the transport and slaughter of the animals is appalling. However, my closely argued ethical objections were deemed to be racist by one Guardian journalist and others who subscribe to the view that feelings of disgust at the idea of eating pets is indicative of hostility to other cultures, and disgust is a racist emotion which should have no part in ethical argument. My point was, however, that ethics is not a response to disgust, rather disgust is a valid response to something unethical. Sadly, the views of protesters against the dog meat industry in Korea were also dismissed by our anti racist left. And because some of these animal welfare protesters attended lectures of mine at Cambridge reports of their persecution were censored from one of the leading anarchist blogs during the period when a demonstration against the Cambridge bumps was underway.
I've eaten rat in India, ants in North Africa, Kudu in S.Africa, big eyed bugs in peanut sauce in Johannesburg, frogs and snails in France, raw chopped horse meat in Provence, a Donkey sausage in Savoie. Nothing but nothing was as foul as the Pizza I had from Pizza Hut, Weston super Mare.
Gitane, That's brilliant. Right to the point, nearly spilt my coffee over the keyboard laughing.
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