robert@fm
Much missed member
- Relationship to Diabetes
- Type 2
When I first joined this board, you had a very cute avatar of a pig. 🙂 Several other cute pictures of pigs/piglets have since appeared (I think I posted at least one of those)...
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Has the horsemeat scandal put you off eating certain things?
- Thread starter Northerner
- Start date
- Status
When I first joined this board, you had a very cute avatar of a pig. 🙂 Several other cute pictures of pigs/piglets have since appeared (I think I posted at least one of those)...
DeusXM
Well-Known Member
- Relationship to Diabetes
- Type 1
There's a posting ostensibly from a butcher doing the rounds on Facebook at the moment - I think he's said it extremely well.
THE TRUTH ABOUT CHEAP MEAT
No doubt you are outraged about the horse meat scandal. You have every right to be ? criminality, profiteering, potential fraud, all have led to many people eating an animal they would probably prefer to see in the 3.20 at Kempton and possibly also ingesting dangerous veterinary drugs.
However, I?m going to come at this from another angle and it?s this: it?s your own bloody fault. There you go.
I know, I know; you?re not happy. It?s not your fault is it? It?s the government, the supermarkets, criminals and Goodness knows who else.
But it?s not just them, you see. It?s you.
After a week of this story my patience has finally snapped, and it?s time someone told you a few home truths.
Many of us have been banging on for years about this stuff, trying to make you care about the need for better food labeling, about fairness for farmers, about the need to support local farms to avoid all our food coming from giant, uncaring corporate agri-businesses which churn out cheap product to feed the insatiable appetite of supermarket price-cutting.
We?ve been highlighting the unfairness of UK farmers being forced to meet 73 different regulations to sell to supermarkets which don?t apply to foreign suppliers, and talking about our children growing up with no understanding of food production and, more than all of this, about the way supermarkets have driven down and down and down the cost of meat to the point where people think it?s normal to buy 3lbs of beef (in burgers) for 90p.
And you wouldn?t listen. It was like shouting into a gale.
Through the years of New Labour, when farming and the countryside were demonised, you wouldn?t listen. You cheerfully chose to believe that all farmers were Rolls Royce driving aristocrats, as painted by John Prescott. You had no sympathyYou wanted a chicken for ?2 and your Sunday roast for a fiver. Well, you got them didn?t you? And hundreds of farmers went to the wall. And you still didn?t care because Turkey slices were ten for 60p.
And now you?re furious, because it turns out that when you pay peanuts for something it?s actually not very good. Who knew eh?
And before you start, don?t even think about the ?it?s all right for the rich who can go to local butcher?s shops but what about the poor?? line. The number of people who can?t afford adequate amounts of food is tiny ? tragic and wrong, yes, but tiny. Supermarkets don?t make their billions from them hunting in the ?reduced? basket, they make their money from millions of everyday folk filling a weekly trolley. You, in other words.
Until the mid 1990s, Britain was also full of good local abattoirs. They were run by people who knew the local farmers who used them, and the local butchers which sold the meat. They were closed in their hundreds by new health and safety regulations which made it impossible for small abattoirs to compete with giant companies doing the job more cheaply.
We tried to tell you, you didn?t care.
And of course, unlike the previous generation you were ?too busy? to actually cook. You were so busy that the idea of making a meal, then making two more out of the left-overs, was like something from Cider With Rosie to you. You bought a meal every night. And so it had to be cheap.
We tried to tell you. You just pointed out that Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall went to Eton and sneered at us.
Cheap rearing abroad. You didn?t care. Cheap slaughtering by machine. You didn?t care. Cheap meat full of c**p and off-cuts. You didn?t care. Frozen blocks of meat off-cuts from the abattoir floor being trucked in from Poland to ensure your pack of mince was cheap enough. You didn?t care. In fact you didn?t know, but that?s because you didn?t care.
But we cared. We kept trying to tell you. We launched campaigns, we wrote letters, we raised funds for adverts. Nobody knows what they?re eating anymore, we said. Nobody recognises how hard it is for farmers here to produce quality meat at a price they can sell because of the supermarkets.
And you didn?t care.
Well, now you know you?ve been munching on Dobbin and his various nasty drugs, possibly for years. And now you care.
And yes, you?ve been misled, cheated, lied to. But you must also take some of the responsibility. You didn?t tell supermarkets you wanted quality, you just watched the ads which said ?175 products cheaper at Asda this week than Tesco? and went to Asda. You made the market they sold in to, you set their priorities. They gave you what you wanted.
So what will you do now? Now that you care.
How about this?
Rather than just moaning at MPs why not actually think about what you eat, what you buy, where it comes from? Why not visit a farm on an open day? Take the kids, show them where their food comes from. If it?s a good farm, why not try to use your consumer power accordingly to make more farms that way? To make them viable. Why not have a think about how you could make meat go further without spending more, through cooking, and thus be able to buy good, British, assured quality meat?
If you do that, I?ll stop blaming you, and some good may come of all of this.
The culprits responsible for all this will be found, and no doubt tried and hopefully convicted. With luck new rules will be introduced to make a repeat harder. But the market will find a way ? it always does. So long as there is a demand for vast quantities of ultra-cheap meat, people will find a way to supply it. So long as people remain uninterested in where their food comes from and how it?s made, someone will cut corners.
It?s a ravenous beast, the market. Like its customers, as it turns out.
So now that you care I?ll tell you that we?ve been highlighting the plight of dairy farmers this year; explaining how supermarkets are paying such a pittance that they can?t stay in business and milk is increasingly coming in from abroad, where standards are lower. Pleasingly people noticed. Some people. If you weren?t one, perhaps, given events, you might like to now?
And when you?ve done that, take a look at the video in the link below, which details the Countryside Alliance?s hard-fought campaign on country-of-origin food labeling. Whilst you were suggesting the CA was only interested in fox hunting, it was doing this, for you, and now you know why.
THE TRUTH ABOUT CHEAP MEAT
No doubt you are outraged about the horse meat scandal. You have every right to be ? criminality, profiteering, potential fraud, all have led to many people eating an animal they would probably prefer to see in the 3.20 at Kempton and possibly also ingesting dangerous veterinary drugs.
However, I?m going to come at this from another angle and it?s this: it?s your own bloody fault. There you go.
I know, I know; you?re not happy. It?s not your fault is it? It?s the government, the supermarkets, criminals and Goodness knows who else.
But it?s not just them, you see. It?s you.
After a week of this story my patience has finally snapped, and it?s time someone told you a few home truths.
Many of us have been banging on for years about this stuff, trying to make you care about the need for better food labeling, about fairness for farmers, about the need to support local farms to avoid all our food coming from giant, uncaring corporate agri-businesses which churn out cheap product to feed the insatiable appetite of supermarket price-cutting.
We?ve been highlighting the unfairness of UK farmers being forced to meet 73 different regulations to sell to supermarkets which don?t apply to foreign suppliers, and talking about our children growing up with no understanding of food production and, more than all of this, about the way supermarkets have driven down and down and down the cost of meat to the point where people think it?s normal to buy 3lbs of beef (in burgers) for 90p.
And you wouldn?t listen. It was like shouting into a gale.
Through the years of New Labour, when farming and the countryside were demonised, you wouldn?t listen. You cheerfully chose to believe that all farmers were Rolls Royce driving aristocrats, as painted by John Prescott. You had no sympathyYou wanted a chicken for ?2 and your Sunday roast for a fiver. Well, you got them didn?t you? And hundreds of farmers went to the wall. And you still didn?t care because Turkey slices were ten for 60p.
And now you?re furious, because it turns out that when you pay peanuts for something it?s actually not very good. Who knew eh?
And before you start, don?t even think about the ?it?s all right for the rich who can go to local butcher?s shops but what about the poor?? line. The number of people who can?t afford adequate amounts of food is tiny ? tragic and wrong, yes, but tiny. Supermarkets don?t make their billions from them hunting in the ?reduced? basket, they make their money from millions of everyday folk filling a weekly trolley. You, in other words.
Until the mid 1990s, Britain was also full of good local abattoirs. They were run by people who knew the local farmers who used them, and the local butchers which sold the meat. They were closed in their hundreds by new health and safety regulations which made it impossible for small abattoirs to compete with giant companies doing the job more cheaply.
We tried to tell you, you didn?t care.
And of course, unlike the previous generation you were ?too busy? to actually cook. You were so busy that the idea of making a meal, then making two more out of the left-overs, was like something from Cider With Rosie to you. You bought a meal every night. And so it had to be cheap.
We tried to tell you. You just pointed out that Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall went to Eton and sneered at us.
Cheap rearing abroad. You didn?t care. Cheap slaughtering by machine. You didn?t care. Cheap meat full of c**p and off-cuts. You didn?t care. Frozen blocks of meat off-cuts from the abattoir floor being trucked in from Poland to ensure your pack of mince was cheap enough. You didn?t care. In fact you didn?t know, but that?s because you didn?t care.
But we cared. We kept trying to tell you. We launched campaigns, we wrote letters, we raised funds for adverts. Nobody knows what they?re eating anymore, we said. Nobody recognises how hard it is for farmers here to produce quality meat at a price they can sell because of the supermarkets.
And you didn?t care.
Well, now you know you?ve been munching on Dobbin and his various nasty drugs, possibly for years. And now you care.
And yes, you?ve been misled, cheated, lied to. But you must also take some of the responsibility. You didn?t tell supermarkets you wanted quality, you just watched the ads which said ?175 products cheaper at Asda this week than Tesco? and went to Asda. You made the market they sold in to, you set their priorities. They gave you what you wanted.
So what will you do now? Now that you care.
How about this?
Rather than just moaning at MPs why not actually think about what you eat, what you buy, where it comes from? Why not visit a farm on an open day? Take the kids, show them where their food comes from. If it?s a good farm, why not try to use your consumer power accordingly to make more farms that way? To make them viable. Why not have a think about how you could make meat go further without spending more, through cooking, and thus be able to buy good, British, assured quality meat?
If you do that, I?ll stop blaming you, and some good may come of all of this.
The culprits responsible for all this will be found, and no doubt tried and hopefully convicted. With luck new rules will be introduced to make a repeat harder. But the market will find a way ? it always does. So long as there is a demand for vast quantities of ultra-cheap meat, people will find a way to supply it. So long as people remain uninterested in where their food comes from and how it?s made, someone will cut corners.
It?s a ravenous beast, the market. Like its customers, as it turns out.
So now that you care I?ll tell you that we?ve been highlighting the plight of dairy farmers this year; explaining how supermarkets are paying such a pittance that they can?t stay in business and milk is increasingly coming in from abroad, where standards are lower. Pleasingly people noticed. Some people. If you weren?t one, perhaps, given events, you might like to now?
And when you?ve done that, take a look at the video in the link below, which details the Countryside Alliance?s hard-fought campaign on country-of-origin food labeling. Whilst you were suggesting the CA was only interested in fox hunting, it was doing this, for you, and now you know why.
Northerner
Admin (Retired)
- Relationship to Diabetes
- Type 1
They look good enough to eat! 
mcdonagh47
Banned
- Relationship to Diabetes
- Type 2
They look good enough to eat!
Last edited:
mcdonagh47
Banned
- Relationship to Diabetes
- Type 2
How do you know what you are getting from the local Butcher ? You only have his or her word for it. They are buying cheap and selling dear as well.
( not deer - that's definielty expensive😉
Well I suppose if you know your local butcher then 100% your getting what they say . I know i trust my Butcher 100 % Its a family run shop for 25 yrs And if they say its Lamb,Beef or Pork then i know it will be 🙂 I can asure you they are not buying cheap and selling dear , I quess you get what you pay for
DeusXM
Well-Known Member
- Relationship to Diabetes
- Type 1
The other side of it is that a local butcher probably has to source fairly locally as they have to get whole carcasses. Given horse slaughter still isn't particularly common in the UK, probability's on your side. They would have to go to a particularly special effort to disguise one meat as another once
Most decent butchers will also mince the meat in front of you after you've selected the cut.
I certainly don't think all butchers are paragons of integrity (well, no more so than anyone else is) but the fact remains that it is far, far harder for a butcher to sell a customer incorrectly labelled meat, than it is for a ready-meal manufacturer to put the wrong meat in a meal and then ship it to the supermarket.
Most decent butchers will also mince the meat in front of you after you've selected the cut.
I certainly don't think all butchers are paragons of integrity (well, no more so than anyone else is) but the fact remains that it is far, far harder for a butcher to sell a customer incorrectly labelled meat, than it is for a ready-meal manufacturer to put the wrong meat in a meal and then ship it to the supermarket.
mcdonagh47
Banned
- Relationship to Diabetes
- Type 2
yes but how many "local" butchers make their own sausages, pies, or burgers. Which is where the problems lay. Most butchers will be buying those things in from food manufacturers.
And if they are not buying cheap and selling dear they wont be very prosperous - its the basic principle of any business.
And if they are not buying cheap and selling dear they wont be very prosperous - its the basic principle of any business.
My local butcher does make sausages... and to a Slimming World friendly fat content. (Yay! Half a syn each.) And the extra lean mince is made daily from stewing steak (I asked). You can tell it's low fat because there are hardly any white bits, and nothing cooks out of it. Not artificially red, either. It's dearer than the higher fat stuff, but worth it.
The chap who served me was complaining about getting up at 4am to cart 3 tonnes of beef carcasses up to the first floor... and I'm confident that he'd spot the difference between a cow and a horse.
The chap who served me was complaining about getting up at 4am to cart 3 tonnes of beef carcasses up to the first floor... and I'm confident that he'd spot the difference between a cow and a horse.
F
FM001
Guest
All the meat in our butchers comes from local farms and the animals are slaughtered in local abattoirs, just how it should be.
mcdonagh47
Banned
- Relationship to Diabetes
- Type 2
crikey , don't they even sell corned beef, cold meats, pork pies, meat pies, Danish Bacon, New Zealand lamb ?
AlisonM
Much missed Moderator
- Relationship to Diabetes
- Type 1.5 LADA
Nope. All the products my butcher sells are produced and prepared in Scotland and the vast majority is from the Highland region. Pies, pasties, pates and potted meats included.
PattiEvans
Well-Known Member
- Relationship to Diabetes
- Type 1
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I'm not in the least fazed by eating horse providing it's decent good quality horse meat. I've eaten it more than once in France. What I am concerned about is eating rubbish and the sweepings off the abbatoir floor. I do take the time to cook from scratch and frankly have much nicer meals because of it. I ask the butcher to mince for me but I don't ask for it lean, a touch of fat makes much better meals, same as a joint of beef for roasting will be far more tender with a layer of fat on it.
I know everyone leads busy lives, and yes, I'm retired, but only just. Until I finished in December I would cook at the weekends and anything I cooked would be for 6 or 8 and I'd freeze it in portions for 2 (others may need different portions), that way I'd have a home cooked meal that took no time during the week. There are so many different things that you can make, all of which taste better than the processed version.
I know everyone leads busy lives, and yes, I'm retired, but only just. Until I finished in December I would cook at the weekends and anything I cooked would be for 6 or 8 and I'd freeze it in portions for 2 (others may need different portions), that way I'd have a home cooked meal that took no time during the week. There are so many different things that you can make, all of which taste better than the processed version.
F
FM001
Guest
No they don't sell Danish Bacon or New Zealand lamb, all the meat sold is locally sourced. The butchers have 3 shops and the pies are made at the original shop and distributed to the other 2, the sign outside says that everything sold is local including the chutneys and mint sauces.
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