Princess Anne has said that we should eat more horsemeat in the UK.
She believes that owners would take more care of their horses if they thought they would get a better price for a horse "fit for human consumption" than they currently get at the abbatoirs for whatever the meat is used for.
Personally I have eaten it often in France and Switzerland and have no problem eating it in the UK if the price is right and it is imported under the right health checks.
The last bit because if the idea was to take off there is not enough of the meat around the UK and we would probably import some stocks possibly even from Eastern Europe where we have had problems (foot n mouth) with the products before.
Nothing wrong with Chevaux, eaten it loads of times when abroad and a nice tasty option/alternative.
Just that the most of the horsey set / pony club types don't seem keen on the idea in the UK.
Though having seen the state of many of the UK horse/pony population dotted around muddy fields Princess Anne has a valid point around husbandry and welfare
think ive already comsumed a vest amount of horse meat in my time and something thats been labelled up as cod.
getting the right food to eat is important but then again people demand cheap food and the supermarkets give us it so are we partly at fault due to the amount we consume and throw away?
im still alive, maybe some of this pretend stuff has made me ill at some point, who knows.
but im sure other foods have gone through a process which is illegal and sold, eaten by major markets across the globe.
Providing cheap food is no excuse for fraud, I still want honesty, I want to know what I am buying cheap or not, I want to make my own decision to buy or not based on price AND product.
Much is said about the reason for cheating the public to give us the cheap food we ask for but that is urban myth, the more expensive the product the more likely it is to be copied ask Versace, Gucci, Rolex, Levi, Channel.
Ask the alcohol producers, how many fake tins of ASDA smart price lager do you think gets copied compared with branded spirits like Smirinoff or Bacardi. Do you think they copy the cheap Vodka to make it even cheaper ?
The same applies to food, fraudsters hit the expensive items like Salmon, Caviar etc just as much as they do Cod, beef, pork and other relatively inexpensive food products.
Supermarkets do try to bring us cheap products but they try to do it whilst still using the basic ingredients, yes they can add water to ham or chicken, there is much they can do to make a product cheaper but putting horsemeat in a product whilst labelling it beef is not something I believe they would knowingly do.
If a chicken tastes good but contains 70% water does it matter providing we know it's contents from the label ? we can choose a chicken with less water content or we can save money that choice is ours, but it is not our choice if the chicken content is horse labelled as chicken.
I think it is very interesting to see that the majority (based on this small poll) would either eat horsemeat or at least try it.
The interesting thing is that though, as is to be expected, some would never eat it, nobody seems to be basing their decision on price, yet we are constantly hearing that the horsemeat scandal was our own fault for wanting cheaper products.