Horse DNA found in beef burgers on sale in Tesco and Lidlt

We have tesco audits continuously (not in the meat industry!) surprised it has not been picked up sooner from the sounds of it...


Fwiw I would eat horse meat, and have.
 
teamgossip said:
Cronkmooar - your story didn't half make me giggle! I have a tedious link type of story to yours - I once used to work for asda and i found about 6 loaves of shop made bread, with very minor damage to their silly flimsy packaging, the actual bread was intouched/damaged so I asked my department manager if I cud take these home for my chickens! Instead of them being wasted in the crusher. Her answer, sorry but no! Because asda could not guarantee that the bread was safe to enter into the food chain - I'm guessing cause it was damaged (or something along them lines)! I was shocked n said I didn't eat my chickens, she asked if I ate their eggs, when I replied yes she just shook her head and said 'food chain!' And even though the eggs were for personnel consumption and I was happy to take the risk, she could not break asda protocol! I still wonder now what harm un damaged bread can do to a free range chicken which eats from the ground!
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Probably the same reason as with the sheep

Anyway the sheep aren't so keen on my bread - must be the lack of preservatives or raw meat flavour - they have moved on to Jacobs cream crackers:D
 
A local smallholder told me you can ONLY feed licenced feed to any animal entering the food chain, that includes not giving slops to pigs, left over lettuce to chickens etc. (Not sure if grass is licenced though:D)

Regarding the horse meat - as a lifelong veggie I'm not affected, but I despair of the meat "industry" if this could happen. What horses are these? They're obviously unregulated....horrible thought but they could be black market for all anyone knows. Remember the recent story about the horse cremation companies that are being prosecuted....? They could be anyone's old ned for all we know...
 
Lynds said:
surely its not a beef burger if its horse... should just be 'burger'! It wouldnt really bother me that much - supermarket burgers have all sorts of junk in them - horse meat's probably the best of it!!
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(I would never eat it)
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nosenseofdirection said:
I'm a veggie anyway but it is a bit alarming that they don't seem to have any sort of bio security to prevent this kind of contamination- it says 'horse DNA' not 'horse meat', could be horse turds for all we know...
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actually it does say horse meat if you click on the small video, the commentator uses the word horse meat twice at least :(
 
Landcruiser said:
A local smallholder told me you can ONLY feed licenced feed to any animal entering the food chain, that includes not giving slops to pigs, left over lettuce to chickens etc. (Not sure if grass is licenced though:D)
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That is a fair point - but just to clarify with my sheep:D I have 5 and they are all pets, they are so old now they are past mutton! :eek:

Neither I nor anyone else will ever eat them - and I haven't touched lamb since I got my first one
 
perfect11s said:
Not squeamish but we should considder the welfare issues, Ie horses the transport , hens in battery cages , pigs in crates, the way veal calves are reared and so on..
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I absolutely agree. But not long ago there was much uproar about the meat available generally in this country being Hallal, so I make sure to support local butchers and farm shops where they hopefully have the provenance of the meat they sell.
 
I would think that the horse meat in the burgers has been cheaply purchased from Europe where they obviously eat the horse.

I would be more suspect if the horse was actually British/Irish though!
 
Traces of zebra found in Tesco barcodes....

to be honest, I have always worried about burgers..I would prefer to buy beef & ask the butcher to mince it for me or mince it at home. anything reconstituted has a risk of any old whatever finding its way in..earlier someone mentioned chicken parts in beef burgers so would not surprise me..whats done/eaten is done so guess we can only avoid avoid avoid & hope they are hit hard by food standards . If its cross contamination, no wonder people are so often sick on burgers. Yes I understand its a lot of surface area on mince for germs to gather, but honestly how do we know they are really 100% beef..look at all the fillers and rubbish that are put in so many of our foods these days to keep profits up & costs down...trying not to think about it.
 
SaharaS said:
Traces of zebra found in Tesco barcodes....
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Hahahaha!

To be honest the issue here for me is the fact that they havn't stated that their is horse meat in them. If they had stated it I would have probably still bought them. I just don't like the lying.
Hey, I have chickens and eat chicken. Am I a terrible person? Maybe.. :cool:
 
Brings a whole new deeper meaning to their stripey logo too...and come to think of it..some of their barcodes can be a tad willfull, particularly on carrots...:eek:

Shergars Bum...that made me shudder! Going to be highly suspicious from now on..even with chicken drumsticks!The only thing you'll be able to tell is true will be bacon..if you can turn a veggie with it, you've probably got the genuine article!!
 
Landcruiser said:
A local smallholder told me you can ONLY feed licenced feed to any animal entering the food chain, that includes not giving slops to pigs, left over lettuce to chickens etc. (Not sure if grass is licenced though:D)
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Ours pigs are fed leftovers all the time and the meat is sold. Been defra'd and they've not mentioned a problem with this.

We aren't however allowed to feed eggs or meat and I seem to recall anything cooked (regardless of pet or food) but have witnessed them chomping through a rabbit on more than one occasion...
 
Patterdale said:
I think there'll be a far bigger outcry about the pork they found in them.
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Nah, people are happy to stick their heads in the sand as far as that goes.

Having worked at one place (very very briefly) where they had intensive pig farming, I think it's one of the cruelest animal practices and have no idea how it's legal. Pigs are one thing I will never buy anywhere but the free-range I know (and could name).

Edit: Apologies blonde moment... I was reading as pork burgers... I'm not sure there would be would there? Anyone I know with religious views to not eating pork won't eat normal burgers... they eat halal.
 
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I don't eat beef luckily, but I'd be horrified if I'd accidentally eaten horse. In this country, we don't eat horses. They aren't bred for it. IMO its like eating dogs and cats! Its so so sad that ANY horses end up at slaughter houses in the first place, too many heartless people in the world.

PandorasJar - I totally agree with you about intensive pig farming, its absolutely sickening! I was seriously shocked with what I saw, and the farm I went to was meant to be a really "good" one in the area. Apparently it was "good" because it occassionally hung a branch for the piglets to play with!! Even though the piglets were squashed into small rooms with horrid floors, concrete walls and no ventilation so if you walked it in was unbearably hot and the amonia burnt your eyes. As for the poor mother pigs who are put into metal cages round their bodies where they aren't allowed to move at all except to stand up or lie down... wow... horrid doesn't even cut it. I looked into free range pork but could find NONE in the supermarket, do you know of an easily available brand which is free range?? Its surprising considering so many people will only buy free range chicken but dont think about the pigs!
 
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MagicMelon said:
I don't eat beef luckily, but I'd be horrified if I'd accidentally eaten horse. In this country, we don't eat horses. They aren't bred for it. IMO its like eating dogs and cats! Its so so sad that ANY horses end up at slaughter houses in the first place, too many heartless people in the world.
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I find that a bit of a strange view.

I will never understand how people are happy to eat one animal and not another because 'we don't in this country' or how it's heartless to eat horse, but most will happily eat a lamb etc.

I'd far prefer anything free range than cows at certain farms, battery chickens or intensive farmed pigs. If it's been bred, farmed and slaughtered humanely then I see no problem. The problem occurs when the animal is farmed poorly and transported/slaughtered inhumanely.

And yes for the record I will happily eat most meats.

Cat is not really comparable to horse though, I do not see a way of humanely farming cats.
 
The difference for me between horse (and other livestock) vs. dogs and cats is the fact the latter are carnivorous.

(and for the smart arses, yes I know pigs, and chickens will eat literally anything, but for arguments sake!)
 
MagicMelon said:
PandorasJar - I totally agree with you about intensive pig farming, its absolutely sickening! I was seriously shocked with what I saw, and the farm I went to was meant to be a really "good" one in the area. Apparently it was "good" because it occassionally hung a branch for the piglets to play with!! Even though the piglets were squashed into small rooms with horrid floors, concrete walls and no ventilation so if you walked it in was unbearably hot and the amonia burnt your eyes. As for the poor mother pigs who are put into metal cages round their bodies where they aren't allowed to move at all except to stand up or lie down... wow... horrid doesn't even cut it. I looked into free range pork but could find NONE in the supermarket, do you know of an easily available brand which is free range?? Its surprising considering so many people will only buy free range chicken but dont think about the pigs!
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It's very rare to find free-range pig. There's no money in intensive pig farming let alone free range. I go through my local butchers who I know where the supply comes from and the farm I used to work on as know they are well and truly free range and spoilt as pets for their time.

The last intensive place I saw was at a college I attended... while I was there we protested about studying welfare due to the appalling welfare conditions for those pigs. It fell on deaf ears and they even had the nerve to film a bbc programme showing them naturally breeding (which I know for a fact didn't occur normally, all were AI, no boars on site and no outside livestock allowed to be brought on to site). The sowing pens were horrific. Kept in them for a fair length of time and not enough room for the sow to turn around so lived in their own filth. If you've ever seen a pig truly free range, they are the cleanest animals. From birth they move to the side of the bed to poo and a few days will remove themselves completely.

I'm also fussy with eggs. Free-range means very little. Can't remember the rules exactly but it didn't mean that they were necessarily living free-range for the long haul. I recall a certain number of days they had access to the outside... keep a chicken in long enough and they don't bother venturing out! I seem to recall Happy Eggs being very poor in this but again I may have picked the wrong name there.
 
My view to all the twossocks on face ache saying ''killing ponies is murder''

''Really people. Get over this horse meat thing, it may be about the 'food standards' but is not about cruelty, as long as the horses were dispatched quickly and efficiently (without having to travel over seas in terrible conditions, another matter entirely) then what is the issue? On the continent horse meat is as popular as cow (and far healthier!) As a horse lover I would far rather horses be humanely destroyed and used in meat and pet products (if for human consumption clearly labeled ;)) than left to suffer neglect and cruelty at the hands of thick ignorant/downright evil people or die of starvation on Bodmin moor. No I wouldn't choose to eat horse meat out of sentiment but have no issue with horses being used for meat in this country, as long as they are destroyed in UK abattoirs. Its better than some other fates.''
 
All this labelling of what is and isn't in what we buy is pretty farcical imo and perhaps we are better not knowing! Ok you've got people with allergies who could be affected but the labelling doesn't really give the whole truth. What exactly is "rusk" or "filler"? Do I want to know? probably not! I used to be heavily involved with the farming of Salmon (the vast majority of salmon available to be bought is farmed) and you just wouldn't want to know what they are fed on!!!! To put it another way I will NEVER eat farmed Salmon and can luckily tell the difference between what has been farmed and what hasn't which to the untrained eye is all but impossible. Treated human sewage, which is DISGUSTING, being used as cheap fertilizer for crops to feed to animals intended for human consumption or worse (illegal I believe, but goes on) animals heading for the food chain being grazed directly on land fertilized with human sh.. There are good reasons why my family eat very little meat!
 
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