Scandal at the supermarkets

We can be sure that none of the cheap "beef" found to actually be of the equine variety has made its way onto the tables of the wealthy.

The fact is that the "value" products exposed for their impurities are certain to have been bought by people with the least cash in their pockets.

Food standards union Unison rightly highlights the role of one Dickensian villain in this sorry story - our collaborationist government which has been busy slashing funding for inspections put in place to keep us safe.

This is another example of the "red tape" myth that our oyster-and-champagne-slurping millionaire's government has used to justify its anti-public agenda.

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Tesco says belatedly that it has "beefed" up its own checks on the food it sells, but the thought of the supermarkets acting as gatekeepers is unappetising.

Only properly resourced, independent public food inspectors will suffice - and more of them.

Supermarkets and manufacturers have been quick to distance themselves from their supply chains. They never intentionally sold horse meat.

But they share the blame - and particularly so the biggest supermarket names which exploit their near-monopoly position to rack up multibillion-pound profits.

Through their relentless pursuit of large margins by squeezing suppliers, while scrambling to compete by selling the cheapest food, they are responsible for a wave of destruction that is claiming long-established factories such as Leicester pie and pizza-maker RF Brookes, axed last year by aggressively expansionist parent 2 Sisters group.

2 Sisters owner Ranjit Singh Boparan has a personal fortune estimated at £190 million. The once 720-strong workforce had no such luck. It was finally snuffed out last year, some months after Marks & Spencers axed a key supply contract.

Anglesey meat processor Welsh Country Foods is the latest victim of this extortion racket punishing the workers - 350 jobs look set to go as Dutch owner Vion, fresh from shutting down Hall's in Scotland, pulls the plug after Asda scrapped a contract in search of cheaper meat.

All three workforces were or are unionised, and all have fallen foul of remote owners and supermarkets pushing to slash margins to the bone in pursuit of profit.

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Rising meat and grain prices globally have undoubtedly played a part too. The grotesque culture of waste encouraged by food retailers' carefully orchestrated buy-more-than-you-need tactics, which play on human psychology to maximise sales, helps to fuel this upward pressure on prices and downward pressure on wages and quality.

Despite pay freezes, mass unemployment and the worst economic crisis in a century, the big four supermarkets - Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury's and Morrison's - have managed to rack up joint megaprofits of £26.6 billion since 2008, not including Asda's as-yet-unannounced 2012 haul.

Their annual profits have risen from a collective £4.47bn to over £6bn in the same period.

Little wonder then that by the time they've gobbled their own juicy slice of the pie all that's left for the cash-strapped people buying their wares, the workers toiling to make and sell them, and the many victims of their ongoing industrial trail of destruction, are a few crumbs and some dead horse.

The solution is to force the supermarket's well-fed shareholders to stuff less wonga into their fat wallets, and have a people-first government bring in policies to put more money in ours.

And if these big business profiteers won't do as they're told they should be compelled to by the taxman and the law.