Personal Blogs

The news is full of stories about horse meat in processed food at the moment.

Why now? I don't know for sure, but I rather suspect it's because people have only recently started testing for horse DNA, and not because no-one ever put horse meat in cheap processed food before. It would not surprise me one little bit if it turned out that this sort of thing had been going on for years.

The problem is that the consumer demands cheap food. Meat should not be cheap. We'd like it to be cheap, but the reality is that it really shouldn't be. To rear animals for food in an ethical and humane way is a very resource intensive process. If you're doing it right, it's going to be expensive. Once supermarkets and other food suppliers start responding to consumer pressure to supply meat at rock-bottom prices, then it's inevitable that corners are going to be cut.

Clearly somewhere along the line, someone has been actively dishonest. Somewhere between the abattoir and the supermarket shelves, someone knowingly sold horse meat as beef. There's no excuse for that, of course, but in a multibillion pound Europe-wide industry, it's inevitable that there are going to be some less than scrupulous players.

But what of the supermarkets' role in this? Are they the innocent victim of someone else's fraud?

Absolutely not, IMHO. It is their job to know where their meat comes from. In an ideal world, a conversation in a supermarket buying department might go like this:

Buying underling: "Boss, I've found a new supplier of beef for our burgers. They're only charging half the price of our existing supplier!"

Buying boss: "Well, that's a suspiciously large difference in price. I think we need to be careful here. If you think this is worth pursuing, then let's get our quality assurance department to pay them a visit and make absolutely sure that they're not cutting any corners."

I'm guessing that what actually happened is more along these lines:

Buying underling: "Boss, I've found a new supplier of beef for our burgers. They're only charging half the price of our existing supplier!"

Buying boss: "Sounds legit. Where do I sign?"

Now, I'm not saying that the supermarket buyers are necessarily evil people. But here's the thing. There is relentless pressure to keep costs to a minimum. If you find something that's a bit cheaper than it really should be under those circumstances, I'm guessing it's all too easy for a bit of cognitive dissonance to set in. You know, deep down, that the prices are a bit too good to be true. But you don't want to believe that there's anything wrong that's going to scupper this great new deal that could get you a promotion. So you ignore that little nagging doubt that you have.

So are the supermarkets the real bad guys here? Partly, but, and I know this isn't going to be a popular opinion, I believe that we also have to blame consumers. Consumers want cheap meat products. Supermarkets are responding to that demand. They don't actually have a huge amount of choice about that if they want to stay in business.

Politicians are currently expending a lot of hot air on how shocked they are that so many supermarket meat products contain horse. (Are they really shocked? I'm not. Did you really expect that a beef lasagne costing just £1.60 contains only wholesome pure beef?) They will no doubt introduce some more regulation that makes it harder to get away with selling horse meat passed off as beef.

So that will solve the problem, right?

Wrong. The problem is that people expect their food to be produced on the cheap. When the horse meat problem is fixed, other problems will come along and take their place. The only solution is if consumers start to take a bit more of an interest in where their food comes from and are prepared to pay a little more to make sure that their food is produced properly.

Yes, I know that times are tough and there are many who struggle to get by. But there are many ways of eating cheaply without buying processed foods. Not everyone is lucky enough to live near to a local butcher, but for those who do, there are plenty of cheaper cuts of meat that can be delicious (one of my personal favourites is hand of pork). And there's no need to eat meat at all: a vegetarian diet is far cheaper, and healthier as well as an added bonus. If you can't afford to eat good meat every day, it's far better to have it occasionally as a special treat than eat meat of dubious provenance regularly.

So until consumers change their shopping habits, then I'm afraid we are going to see more food scandals. If not horse, then something else. It's inevitable.

Just a thought, but has anyone been checking the supermarket meat for rat DNA?