Meat production is the real scandal
Wednesday 13 February 2013
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EmailIn spite of "beef" products containing up to 100 per cent horse meat and pork found in halal food in prisons, Environment Secretary Own Paterson has rejected calls for a ban on meat imports.
The Food Standards Agency, he bleats, advise that all products on sale are safe for consumption. But now it transpires that consumers may have been also unwittingly eating donkey meat.
One can only await further revelations, which are surely certain, with interest.
According to the Independent the meats come from abattoirs in Romania, via a Cyprus dealer, working through another in the Netherlands, then on to a meat plant in the south of France, which sells to a factory in Luxembourg, to be made into frozen meals sold in 16 countries.
Common sense dictates that rigid hygienic standards, temperature control and checks are impossible given hand changing and circuitous routes. It also makes a complete nonsense of "sell by" dates - surely long past by the time the foods are displayed.
It seems that the public may not alone have been eating donkeys, but as the old saying goes, are being led by them.
Felicity Arbuthnot
London E9
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