Sunday, January 20, 2013

Dumb and Dumber


Poor old Grant Shapps (the name he is currently using in public), at least he had the wit and presence of mind to realise the mistake he made when he claimed, on Question Time, that we don't eat horses because they are carnivores.

What annoyed me this week were the po faced complaints about Gavin Esler being cooked and then consuming horse meat on Newsnight. Surely any journalists opinion carrying any weight (and I don't mean 7st in the 2:15 at Newmarket) is based on experience and he had every right to try the freshly prepared flesh didn't he? One viewer of BBC24's News Watch (a sort of Points of View for grown-ups) said that the cooking demonstration had upset both her and her children. Would you sit down and watch a programme that announced it was going to do something, in the name of journalistic integrity, if you knew it was about a subject that was going to upset you.

A little research online found a wonderful article printed in the Evening Independent newspaper in Florida on 23rd January 1920 about the growth in the sale of horse meat in the U.S.A. The article is called When Dobbin Goes To The Meat Block and is interesting as an idea of the mindset nearly one hundred years ago.

Of course times have changed and in the States (since 2007), as in the U.K, horses are now regarded as domestic pets rather than animals raised for their food, hence the outpouring of shock and horror over the past few days. There is however a lucrative market in the exporting of horse flesh from the U.K whether by fair or foul means and animals from the New Forest and Devon's two national parks manage to find their way onto European dinner plates one way or another.

9 comments:

A Northern Bloke said...

Horses? Pets? Yeah, everyone on our street has one! :-)

For me it seems a bit of a "Much ado about nothing" but it's been worth the fuss just for jokes. The best one so far, I think, is the "My Lidl Pony" referred to on Span's blog.

Span Ows said...

That cutting is interesting but we have to remember that although not pets (referring to Shy's comment) back in those days there was MORE than one horse on every corner.

Your last sentence was something I had intended to add on mine but for some reason forgot: I KNOW of horse exporting operations and told my colleagues this week that it wouldn't surprise me if it was our own horse-meat coming back as burger filler.

Paul said...

I hadn't read Spans post when I posted, I was supposed to post this yesterday but went with LA instead.

I agree Span - living and working close to the New Forest and having farmers as clients I hear of such stories.

A Northern Bloke said...

Horses coming back as burger meat?

Bad Karma or what?

Paul said...

Bad something!

Span Ows said...

bad korma, but that's another story!

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