it was revealed that Comigel – the company that supplied the meat used in products withdrawn from British supermarkets – got its meat from a Romanian abattoirthat slaughters both horses and cattle.
Pretty obvious it seems.
Some people may be interested to know the current list of withdrawn products. I say current, as it is a fast moving story and this is bound to change.
List of beef products withdrawn in latest horse meat find
- last updated Tue 12 Feb 2013
Findus:
Beef lasagne 320g, 360g, 500g
Aldi:
Today's Special Frozen Beef Lasagne
Today's Special Frozen Spaghetti Bolognese
Oakhurst Beef Burgers
Tesco:
Everyday Value Spaghetti Bolognese
Everyday Value Beef Burgers
Beef Quarter Pounders
Iceland:
Quarter Pounders batch 2250 A 15:27
Quarter Pounders batch 2218 A 15:55
Lidl:
Moordale Quarter Pounders: 0.1%
Moordale Ultimate Beef Burgers: LOQ
Moordale Beef Burgers: LOQ
Dunnes Stores:
Flamehouse Chargrilled Quarter Pounders: 0.1%
St. Bernard Beef Burgers: LOQ
Products labelled Halal found to contain pork DNA - The company which supplied halal food found to contain traces of pork DNA was identified as McColgan Quality Foods Limited, a Northern Ireland-based company. The products were distributed by 3663 and served in prisons in Britain. There is also suspicion over meat supplied to hospitals and schools. I understand 3663 also supplies the armed forces as a sister contract to the the health and education departments'.
Does anyone remember bird flu?
Or was it swine?
Anyhoo, back to horse..
Dont see what the fuss is all about .. apart from the pork in the halal .. thats hilarious lol but you want a better chance of most being beef .. go to the butchers or waitrose .. if its in lidl or tesco .. its cheap because .. you get what you pay for usually .. if you eat meat you have probably eaten other animals you wouldnt chose to eat.
But going back to the start of this topic. .. i say they should be grateful of anyone in any kind of vehicle turning up to help out. Otherwise its pure ungratefulness. We need to realise that we have it really easy here and stop whining about some shergar in your cheap deal burgers and lasagne ... wonder whats in the findus fish fingers ... a bit of dolphin or a tad of sea horse
Go organic .. its good for you and must be all beef too .. now who is up for a roast .. you cook as i cannot.
J
Watching all this unfold is farcical. I doubt that anyone has or will come to any harm eating horse meat, but it just illustrates what "value" products really mean. In the quest to get ever cheaper products the Supermarkets have themselves created this opportunity for wholesale suppliers to "cut" their products with an alternative substance. Ask your local drug dealer - they know all about it.
We may have a right to know what we are eating but we also have a responsibility ourselves not to be too surprised when we pay less than wholesale prices and discover that what we are eating is not as described. Further, if you eat ready meals you can't honestly expect them to be nutritious can you?
Your right to an opionion
But your talking crap
Yes we have a right to recieve what we are told we are paying for I agree but the reason this does not always happen is because people are willing to cheat and steal from us not because we seek cheaper products.
It has NOTHING to do with what we can afford to pay for what we get, as has been reported in the news, many of the products targetted are the higher priced expensive items that have bigger profit margins for the thieves to gain from, items such as foie gras and caviar are regularly targetted by fraudsters, Expensive wines and spirits, even Eyptian Cotton sold in the UK is rarely actuall eygptian cotton as we percieve it to be.
It appears that the fraudsters are targetting the higher end of the processed food market for the same higher profiit margin reasons.
Assuming that we should expect to be ripped off because we can only afford lower priced food items it at the very least naive and reeking of the "let them eat cake" attitude of people who have to budget less than others, the kind of thing I would expect to come from MP's talking to each other in private.
I don't know a lot of people who buy budget, low price, own brand products unless they have to, most people always buy on a basis of Value for Money, true some people think every penny saved is a good thing and quality is imaterial the same as some people think that the more expensive an item the better it is but for the majority, VFM and Budget are the governing factors in what they purchase.
To believe that fraudsters would only target budget goods is a silly assumption, Asda sell watches at £5 each, do you think the fraudsters make copies of them or do they make copies of Rolex watches, Versace clothes, Armani perfumes, there isn't much profit in copying poundland aftershave with cheaper ingredients and I would imagine the same applies to budget processed food.
Asda Extra Special ranges and all other higher priced foods are just as vulnerable as budget ranges, perhaps moreso.
The real reason this "opportunity has been created" is pure and simple humnan greed and nothing we purchase is immune to the scams, be it clothes, perfume, CDs, toys, fireworks, cars, food or any other product on the market.
We are also being told by the investigators that it is not just the ready meal market that is being hit, recently it was revealed that the 100% beef steak sold at Wetherspoons was in fact 100% wilderbeast, Kebabs could contain horsemeat the like, crabsticks are no longer sold as crabsticks because they don't contain crab and on it goes.
I am not talking crap at all. Look at the rules that govern the minimum content of a " value" burger - it is on the BBC News website at the moment. How can anyone be surprised that a "value" product bought for less than the cost of wholesale beef does actually contain very little beef. Ready made foods should be illegal they are so full of rubbish. As for kiddie favourites - fish fingers - best not go there...
Convenience and complacency is the culprit. Anyone and everyone is perfectly able to buy good wholesome food and cook it safely and I stand by my comment that I am not surprised that this has happened. In the relentless push for cheaper and cheaper products the system will eventually break - either by accident or by intent.
TH. The original problem here was at the door of a Findus 100 % beef Lasagna. There are laws governing misuse of products not labelled correctly, and so there should be. To sell an item that is not what a consumer has brought is illegal in itself, whether it be a Findus Lasagna or a Audi car.
I have always said that when a product becomes so damn cheap to buy, where is the profit in the product for the makers? Do they do as a lot do now with various products, by charging the same for a product with less in it? This is rife now especially in the confectionery industry.
I think the FSA have been sadly lacking in it's responsibilities, and only now the meat is being thoroughly checked. As a consumer I was under the impression with all the past problems with BSE etc, that meat in particular would have come under much stricter scrutiny especially by the supermarkets as it is they they buy the biggest stock of meat.
I am shocked that meat in general was not being checked, and neither more importantly were the meat products on the shelf. Of course they will be now for the next year or two but we need to make sure that the levels of meat produced and put into products, is not only correctly labelled, but what a consumer sees on the box is what is inside the box.
I agree with Dean and with starlight here.
BUT the fact that something is cheap does not make it the reason for fraudsters to target the product quite the opposite is normally the case, ask any trading standards officer, do you watch out for fake bottles of Smironoff vodka or bottles of V Kat ? do you watch out for fake £5 watches from asda or Rolex watches, do you think the top you bought from Primark might be what they say the material is because it is cheap or do you check the Gucci handbag, Versace jeans, Armani perfume. Believing that only cheap foods are targetted and because they are cheap is ridiculous.
Assuming a product is bad because it is cheap is also not necessary, wise to think about it but not absolute in the reasoning, we all know shops and manufactureres have loss leaders, bulk buying, surplus stock and other reasons for knocking things out cheap occassionally.
Some productes ARE sold for less than they pay for them, in not the hope, but in the knowledge that if they can get you into the store for the cheap "loss leaders" and lose a bit on those they will make a very good profit on the other things you buy whilst in there, I am sure you all realise the profit margins available on a ready made sandwhich from the shop foyeur, a light bulb has great profit potential, that impulse by packet of mints .........
There are obviously a lot of people in the UK thinking "that will teach you to buy cheap" how sad for them that they believe people buy cheap just because they are too stingy to buy more expensive products, how sad for them that they don't realise just how much some people have to economise, how sad for them that they feel smug whilst it is quite possible and likely that they are eating horse in thier expensive processed food products.
Processed food - anything not on the fresh food counter and some of the things on the fresh food counter, do you honestly believe that the slab of beef hanging in a butchers may or may not have been treated in some way to make it last longer or look more apetizing or taste better ?
I have said I have eaten horse meat often and will again, I do object to being sold something that is marketed as one thing and turns out to be something else, I know my Budget priced food contains cheaper additives but I don't care, I expect those ingredients to be approved for my consumption, I want ham on my hawaiin pizza not chicken made to look like ham (as is the case with most pizzas) I don' care if my chicken contains a lot of water if it tastes good and is VFM and affordable at least I know it's a chicken.
I am educated on how to cook and i dont often buy ready meals but i do buy beef mince and make chilli and spag bol etc and i am now worried that it might not be beef, i buy it from a supermmarket becuuse i earn minimum wage and cant afford the price my village butchers charges and to be honest i dont trust him any more than anyone else.
I can understand why people buy ready meals thou and i probably would buy them more if they did ones i like ... i, like many other mums, work fulltime and i am also disabled and in extreme pain so the last thing i want to do when i get home from work is cook from scratch and i would love to have the option of ready meals rather than the limited food i do eat (due to time, money and pain but not abiltiy).
Not everyone is able to buy from local butchers and especially ones they trust and some people dont have endless time to cook from scratch aswell as working fulltime and all the house hold stuff they have to do aswell.
Not everyone has the same lifestyle as all of you who are able to buy local meat and cook meals from scratch, dont be so critical, maybe you would like to live how others live for a while to see how they cope
In any case if i or anyone else buys something that is labelled as beef then thats what it should be, it doesnt matter if its a ready meal for a single mum with a full time job and 2 children or a wealthy couple buying lean beef mince to make their cottage pie from scratch.
I'm told that donkey features in salami......
A recipe for coq au vin from the Bourgogne region...
Yes, Yes there are loads of recipes for horsemeat based dishes, that's cool, I like the taste of horsemeat, but I have always believed I knew it was horsemeat when I ate it, totally different scenario to buying chicken coq au vin or anything else labelelled as chicken or beef or port but made from horse