Be Excellent To Each Other

I remember eating one of those burgers. The next day I still had a bit in my teeth.

Tesco just tweeted this:


Was it an intentional (not very good) horse joke, or just a careless slip of the tongue? I don't know, but it's pissed people off a bit more.

Is that seriously for real...?

Perhaps we should invite them to join in with our pun-fest here!

Very easily. "We need to get mincemeat for this burger, and we need it cheaps". "Right, let's buy in some big catering tins of non-specific meat from Spain to pack out the beef with".

Had a burger from a burger van yesterday, they asked if I wanted to put anything on it...

So I said 'Go on then, a fiver each way.'

Good one.

I ate a HAM (ham ham ham hammm) burger and there was all a horse ankle in it and I got the trots from the horse ankle in my hhhhhhammmmmm burger. Horses trot like a horse ankle horse.

If horse meat is cheaper, start selling 100% horse burgers. I'd buy 'em.

(Actually I wouldn't, I don't even buy the beef ones.)

Apparently it would be a good idea to start eating horse, as horses are massively overbred. And that's coming from a couple of horse-mad people I know. So if people who love their horses more than anything in the world, including significant others, suggest eating horses...

My wife's finding the "OMG PEOPLE ATE HORSIES" response pretty amusing. She's Icelandic and they eat horses as a matter of course. One Icelander on Twitter also remarked that she wished there was horse in their burgers. (Icelandic beef is… very light.)

Just seems a shame that all this edible meat is going to be thrown away. I'd happily chew away on it and horse meats normally more expensive. How ever I think the fact they don't know where this meats come from might be the most worrying part. However it's probably better than most of the shit I put in my mouth. *insert pun here*

This could be the crime of the centaury.

That and other things… Not knowing where the meat came from. Not knowing how it got there. Not knowing what other contamination may have occurred. If the meat's wrong for the product, what about safety in terms of processing? Not knowing what's actually in what you're buying is a huge problem these days, not least with intolerances and allergies skyrocketing.

I wonder for those who can afford it if this will prompt a shift from really cheap meat to eating more expensive produce, but less of it. (That's certainly something Kay and I have been doing for a couple of years now. We'll share a chicken breast for one set of wraps, or use a couple of 90%+ pork sausages for the meat in a bolognese.)

I wonder how Tesco will deal with this. They normally like to come across as some one who know what happens at every stage of the food/supply chain. This doesn't make food industry look good at all. Makes you wonder what happens that we don't find out about.

Indeed mate - and it's important to note that "we" (the UK) didn't find out about this at all, it was the Irish. So basically, who knows how long this has been going on for, and indeed what else is there out there that's possibly even worse? Were it not for the diligence of others, would we have *ever* known about this?

I find it very hard to believe that this is the only example of this; it could just be the tip of the iceberg as you say.

I think it's a bit of a stretch to describe Tesco Value burgers as "edible meat", even when correctly constituted.

I went to a BBQ years ago and all the tight buggers turned up with blue stripe burgers and sausages. So, rather than attempting to eat the stuff, I instigated a game of "meat cricket" and managed to hit a six with one particular sausage, much to the chagrin of one of their neighbours who ended up with it in their garden.

The contest had to be stopped shortly thereafter, albeit not due to bad light or inclement weather, but rather, one of Teh Wimmins got inadvertently sprayed with gristle during a particularly vigorous swing of the willow - and she was a vegetarian and did not see the funny side of a bunch of pissed blokes hitting seven bells out of cheap sausage and burger products.

Which to me has never sat well with "everything must be cheap" and "import ALL OF THE FOOD, even when British harvests are doing really well". I'm not against buying the odd thing in Tesco, but I really do think there's a certain aspect of getting what you pay for, regarding sourcing. Ideally, people would buy from local farms. If not, buy less and buy better.

(One of the oddest purchase issues I had was in our local Waitrose. I was looking for some reasonably ethically dealt with pork, and couldn't find any, which I thought was odd. It was then I realised everything of that type of thing that was own-brand in the store was that way by default, and there was a tiny label on the display saying this. Quite the contrast with Tesco fighting hard a while back regarding free-range chickens and the like.)


Every time Kay has an allergic reaction and I frantically check an ingredients list, I wonder that. There's so much cross-contamination in food, and also so many ingredients buried. I'm also increasingly sick of laziness in food. I react badly to garlic, and especially garlic salt, and onion powder will hit me. (It's rather like being unpleasantly drunk—imagine drinking three or so pints and having all the side effects of that but not the actual 'feeling quite happy' bit.) So much food has this stuff in now, purely to rapidly add taste—they're the new salt. Kay bought some popcorn recently that had onion powder, and we got some 'lightly salted' fish that has the bloody stuff in. God knows how it is for products further down the value chain. I'm rather awaiting the day every meal for everyone will be followed by making a rapid dive for antihistamines and steroids.

Shit a brick:

Let's just have another look at that...

One more time:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21377601

When you look more closely, it seems less than you think.

I think i am pretty much going to stop buying any ready meal type things.

I should eat that, then I really would be a donkey-breathed time waster.

Next up its Findus Beef Lasagne……100% Horse meat!!

It used to be that old horses went into glue not “brand” meals.

What do people expect for a "Beef Lasagne costing less that £2?

More care goes into cat and dog food than these meals. More so when they are made in Europe, where collectively they eat everything form fucking sparrow sized birds to horses.

You can eat far better than these processed meals for the same money if you make the effort. In reality most if the people eating these prize Sky, Mobile Phones and booze and fags above diet.

I have no issue with horse meat in cheap shit food products as I don’t eat them.

What's not to like? Tasty meat and free dugs!

I agree. Let them eat cake.

Accurate labelling.

Yeah, tbh, a disclaimer saying "May contain up to X% horsemeat" would satisfy me.

That was never going to happen though, Findus farmed out the making of this product to some dodgy 2 bit eastern European food company and then didn’t follow up and check on them. There wasn’t supposed to be horse meat in the food so it would never have gone on a label!

Just as an aside, the Tesco on the Isle of Man decided to stop selling Manx beef about 18 months ago.

They came up with a big long list of stuff that was wrong with our meat processing plant. (Manx beef has a pretty proud heritage, the animals are bred, raised, slaughtered, and processed 100% on the island, not one single element of any outside agency is involved from field to shop shelf.)

Tesco sent their 'inspectors' round to the plant and came up with a million different points of non-compliance, and it was all the pettiest shit you can possibly imagine. Stuff like the temperature of the fridges wasn't monitored automatically, but done by humans instead. (The plant is a 24 hour operation and they had perfect book-keeping and recording of the temperatures, Tesco just said it had to be done automatically.)

The plant spent a huge amount of time, effort and money to meet all of Tesco's standards, and they finally agreed to put Manx beef back on their shelves back at the start of January.

You can imagine our combination of hilarity and disgust now that all this horse meat burger stuff has come to light. (I don't have any problem with eating horse meat, or any meat for that matter, it's all dead animals - but it does show how laughable all of Tesco's nit-picking about our boys in the abattoir using the wrong types of fucking pens to write stuff down was.)

It doesn't affect me as I honestly believe Tesco to be an incarnation of almost pure corporate evil and I refuse to spend one fucking penny in their store, but a lot of local folks have had some fun with it.

AE, I'd imagine the reason for the automatic monitoring of fridge temperatures would be something to do with it being a more robust process and less easily manipulated to get the results that were required.
It does seem odd though that your story would suggest a pretty stringent inspection process and yet this was missed. Does the law require them to go right back through the supply chain, or would the onus then drop to the supplier to start looking one step back? By that I mean could it be assumed tesco carried out checks on their supplier and expected their supplier to be doing the same to whoever provided them with the meat.
How was this caught? Was it a tesco/findus inspection or a government audit?

One thing I miss about working mon-fri is that I can't listen to today and PM on my commute anymore, I'm so out the loop about current affairs!

Oh I also mean to say how I personally feel about it. I agree with Craig. While I wouldn't be squeamish about eating horse or other less traditional meat, I would be squeamish about the thought that since it wasn't supposed to be what I was eating, I couldn't really have any confidence in the supply chain so I wouldn't know the quality, cleanliness or condition of the meat.
I also agree with his points about allergies/intolerances. I'm trialling a gluten free diet right now and it's so difficult to tell if it is having a positive impact or not and this isn't helped by gluten being a hidden ingredient in lots of things, so I'm sometimes eating it without knowing. I can't trust any form of processes meat, even very high quality burgers or sausages. I have to check every food label, and even then I have been caught by things like getting a coffee out of the machine at work, or using the wrong hand cream with gluten in it!

It was Tesco's own inspectors. The abattoir had been running without incident for decades, supplying local butchers and supermarkets and exporting its produce without issue.

Then Tesco set up shop and after a few years decided that their standards would take precedence over the abattoir's own standards, (they'd been selling Manx beef for years before suddenly deciding the abattior wasn't up to scratch), since Tesco sell a lot of stuff, the abattoir didn't really have much choice but to jump through their hoops, it took well over a year for Tesco to pronounce themselves 'satisfied'.

The key point is that there was never any question whatsoever about the heritage of the meat, the supply chain, the traceability of everything etc etc, it was all procedural and clerical stuff that Tesco wanted doing 'differently' and not necessarily any better.

There's sure as hell never been any horse meat from some dodgy European bodge merchant in any Manx beef products.

Par for the course for Tesco IMO, a total cunt of a corporation. Personally speaking I wouldn't have let them set up shop over here at all.

Which course? The mane?

Would agree with you, but I use Tesco as it’s the closest one. All my meat, fish and veg come from other places, so I really only buy dairy, dry goods and cleaning products from them.

All the supermarkets piss me of for these sorts of reasons

1. Wine that was allegedly £10 or more and is now half price (Where was it ever the higher price?)
2. Mince that is sold in 500, 600, 700g packs then put into buy one get one half price or buy 3 for XXX offers making it difficult to see what the best price is
3. Being charged more for buying larger amounts of things
4. Offers on something that are more expensive than buying the product another way (loose or larger packs)

Would say Tesco is one of the worst as it claims to support the family when really it confuses and over charges them half the time.

It depends on what standards, in the UK it’s illegal to keep pigs in tight pens, it’s cruel and in many cases drives the animals insane. This is not the case all over the EU. So when you see Tesco “British Butcher” sausages have a look at where the meat comes from its not the UK

Aren't retailers required by law to have a "Xp per Y grams" type sticker on the shelf? That's how I work out the best deal.

I don't know if it's law, but

Rocket science, it ain't.

But sometimes they tell you per kg, sometimes per unit, which can be annoying.

And it is the law if your shop is over a certain size ( if you can only open for 6 hours on a Sunday)

Malc

yes, but they often only put the x/y for the original price, not any offers.

Yeah, it's crazy obfusticated. Not by accident or coincidence either, it's clearly structured to make it harder for consumers to get an accurate perception of value.

http://www.tesco.com/groceries/product/ ... ws-1_mince

See if you can work the best value deal from this lot!

Turns out the Findus "beef" was sourced from Romania.

In Romania they have just banned horse and carts from the public highway.

Anyone see a connection?

God knows what the cheese in Findus crispy pancakes is!

Cock smegma.

How is it not just by looking at the £/kg figure?

Because there are several 2 for £7 or 3 for £10 deals as well?

Malc

Another Tesco "Value" product full of horse goodness

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21418342

To those people who say they only buy "value" products or shop at Aldi etc because its all the same and you are just paying for a fancy label*, how come its only the cheap shit so far that has been implicated in all this?

Haven't seen Waitrose implicated yet have we? Perhaps that's because they know where their stuff comes from.



*ie the dull prick I spent a day stuck with just before this all kicked off who kept banging on at how much he saved since he started shopping only at Aldi.

...When will people learn? I totally agree that a £2 frozen lasagne SHOULD state on the label what's supposed to be in it... but there again, you get what you pay for. Why haven't Waitrose been implicated? That's not to in any way excuse this shit, it's a disgrace, but come on.

We Brits should care much more about the stuff we eat! IMO it's time to stop trusting supermarkets making billions and billions in profits and go back to small-scale butchers and greengrocers etc - if there are any left - and let's not kid ourselves that "ready meals" are likely to be any better than eating any other convenience crap.

Alternatively, if you can, just buy less meat but better quality. We get quite expensive burgers but don't have them often. Still, it's not that easy for everyone.

Exactly - unfortunately many people, £2 is literally the difference between being able to eat that day and going hungry. Most of us have been in the situation where you have little choice but to buy as calorific food as possible with your 2 or 3 quid a day food budget, while trying not to think of the long-term health consequences. Or the taste. Pontificating that we all need to start buying expensive pieces of meat and so on from local artisan retailers which don't exist in most urban areas is just condescending and detached to the point of ridiculousness. Many have to feed themselves for less money in a week than the cost of a single lunchtime cocaine snort for a Tory cabinet minister.

...A butcher or a greengrocer is an "artisan retailer"? ...They don't have butchers or greengrocers in urban areas? Man, you're hard work.

As usual for you HoE, you have to follow me round, trying to twist and turn everything I care to say into somehow me being a snob or whatever. All I am saying is that people should not trust factory-produced, ready made meals and should care more about what they eat. Which strikes me as obvious.

When I was skint - which I was for many, many years - I used to make a lovely home-made veg curry with whatever was going cheap in the greengrocers, getting my spices dirt cheap also from Asian shops and getting the pestle and mortar out. Lovely, wholesome, dirt cheap meal that I could eat as much of as I wanted (including freezing portions of it as well in the fridge ice box for later in the week or whenever) - all for much less than laying out £3 a pop on some frozen factory shite. And that was just for me, let alone if I was feeding a family of 5 or more people.

You reckon the poor, hardworking ethnic peoples in this country are all rushing out and buying slabs of Findus horse lasagne, umpteen factory burgers and Tesco Finest(tm) etc. every night, do you...? Lol. Like, as fucking if. They've got more bloody sense - and a proper, informed sense of priorities as well.

If anyone doubted that your average Brit has got his or her priorities all wrong - most can't even boil an egg these days, let alone a cauliflower - that (incredibly depressing) Jamie's School Dinners programme that was on TV a couple of years back should've told 'em all they needed to know.

Lazy sods should start a Kickstarter campaign or something.