Buy local

I agree, I know what's in MY beef!

Not to say that horsemeat is harmful in any way, it's not, but I'm a firm believer in truthful labeling, I get to choose what I eat.

Annie

Actually, there are some real problems with horsemeat that one usually doesn't encounter in herds raised solely for meat. Many of the steeds that end up at the knackers live very active, but probably unsuccessful lives, often on the race track. There, they likely ingested all kinds of PEPs - Performance Enhancing Products. Those are definitely not good to be in the human food chain. Most countries that have a horse slaughter industry insist on thorough testing to ensure the meat is "clean", but these European "beef" products were apparently sourced from a variety of countries who have very lax standards for slaughter, not to mention labeling.

And so we're back to labeling, which is my issue in the first place. I've eaten horse meat, many people in Michigan did in the 70s when the Velsicol Chemical Corporation mixed fire retardant with livestock feed. As a result, a million and a half chickens, about 30,000 cattle, several thousand pigs and sheep were poisoned, slaughtered and just pushed off into landfills. No one knows how much of the meat made it into the food supply. There was a movie, "Bitter Harvest" and a book, "The Poisoning of Michigan". A huge percentage of people in Michigan still test positive for that substance and it causes ongoing health issues such as hypothyroid, immune system malfunctions, skin and liver problems, reproductive issues, who knows what else.

Anyway, a lot of us ate horsemeat. That's what was available. I remember a guy came around to the farm and offered Dad 8 cents a pound for the cattle. Dad told him to get the he!! off the property, we'd eat every bite of them ourselves for that price.

Annie

Duplicate post edited

This post was edited by annie1992 on Thu, Feb 14, 13 at 22:23