The experiment has technically been suspended while I recover from a particularly nasty bout of gastroenteritis. Having said that, so far in my recovery I've only eaten Shreddies and tomato soup so I haven't actually strayed.
As I can't talk about veggie foods etc at the moment, and as I am normally an omnivore and a farm vet, I thought I'd throw in my two-penneth worth on the horsemeat scandal.
1. Yes, it is the consumer's fault. If people will only buy cheap meat, particularly processed meat, and not care or check the quality or source of such meat, then shops and processors will buy from the cheapest sources. These will always be imported meat where there are few or no welfare or rearing standards or checks, fewer abattoir and processing checks and generally less regulation. It is not possible for British farmers to rear their animals to the legal standards in the UK and still make any profit at the prices people want to buy their meat, especially considering the supermarkets etc all take a cut as well. So as long as people buy this stuff, it will always be cheap and nasty and far more vulnerable to "contamination" (how is it contamination if its 100% horse? surely that's just substitution?).
2. Saying that such products are not a healthy risk is a total farce. If you don't know what's in the product, or where the ingredients came from, how can you possibly know whether or not its a healthy risk? There are very strict rules in the UK about residues of antibiotics and other products in meat, with large penalties if they are not adhered to. Its something I have to consider every time I treat an animal that either produces milk or is destined for the human food chain. If people are contaminating beef with horsemeat, its highly likely that said horses have not been checked or monitored for drug residues. Phenylbutazone, a painkiller for horses, can cause blood dyscrasias in some people. Some people are allergic to penicillin and other antibiotics. As much as I thought throwing all the contaminated products was a massive waste (many people would still have eaten them, out of curiousity if nothing else!), saying that they are safe is nonsense.
3. The whole scandal is totally taking the mick out of the "farm to fork" principles of the UK. Farmers spend hours of their time and considerable cost ensuring that their animals are fit for human consumption, that each carcass is traceable back to the farm it came from, that every movement that animal made it its lifetime is recorded (cows have their own passports for life) etc. This naturally makes UK meat more expensive, but guaranteed to be of a higher quality. The legal welfare standards in the UK are also among the highest in the world. But why should they go to all that effort, if people are willing to consume foreign food that may contain banned substances, reared in horrendous conditions, have water and other substances added to it at any stage of the process, not to mention the horrendous number of "food miles" it has travelled.
So, if you want good food that you can trust to be good for you, and contain nothing abnormal or artificial, BUY BRITISH!!! Its not has hard as you think, eating vegetarian once or twice a week (which is also very good for you....) offsets the cost of buying better quality meat for the other days really easily. Also, learn to cook, there are no excuses! Millions of easy to follow cookbooks, free online recipes, free supermarket magazines etc. You only have to try.
Well, that's enough ranting for me, I'm going back to my cup of tea and re cooperating on the sofa with the dog!
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