On 08/02/2013 11:24, Lobster wrote:
On 08/02/2013 11:04, David.WE.Roberts wrote:
....then how can we trust them when they say
"Of course, the horse meat is completely safe to eat."

The only way they could claim that is if the meat came from a supply
farmed for human consumption and rigorously quality checked (as I hope
our
beef, lamb and pork is).

AIUI the companies involved are in Europe, in areas where eating
horsemeat isn't unusual at all and presumably us Anglo-Saxons are
regarded as a bit odd for not using it. So whereas I expect Findus Horse
Lasagane is perfectly normal safe and OK in some places within the EU
(ie, prepared to the same rules and regs as any food shipped to the UK),
it obviously ain't in Blighty; and imagine it's a case of the wrong sort
of meat going down the wrong assemble line somewhere.

I don't know the husbandry behind horsemeat but eg in France it's on
sale openly in the butcher and supermarket, so presumably there are
appropriate food safety processes in place?

One potential problem is that abattoirs in Mexico and Canada supply a
lot of horse meat to Europe and they take 100,000 horses each year from
the USA. In the USA, horses are routinely treated with the
anti-inflammatory phenylbutazone, which is hazardous to humans, even in
trace amounts. This and other banned substances have been found in horse
meat supplied from Mexico and the EU is introducing new regulations from
July this year, in an attempt to give better control over non-EU
slaughtered horse meat.

Colin Bignell