"Richard Russell" wrote in message
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On Feb 8, 1:25 pm, fred wrote:
But how would they differentiate between beef and horse meat
once it had been butchered ? DNA testing would hardly be feasible

Whyever not? If they can sequence DNA from the 500-year-old bones of
Richard III, doing it from butchered (and indeed minced) meat - prior
to cooking that is - should be easy.

And its been done routinely with seafood for quite a while now.

Essentially because there is more opportunity to flog
cheap fish as more expensive fish when its been filleted.

DNA is after all a very stable molecule,
and it's in (virtually) every cell in the body.

That last is overstated, but not relevant to checking
if its horse meat or meat from cattle etc.