We expect companies and their products to be transparent. Knowing what’s in the food their eating is incredibly important to everyone and for some, it’s imperative. People with specialist diets may have dangerous reactions when exposed to certain food products and others may have a moral or religious view which prevents them from eating certain food types. Regardless of why you want to know what’s in your food, finding out afterwards that you’ve eaten something which you otherwise wouldn’t have is worrying and potentially deadly to certain people. It’s a betrayal of trust and when it happens on a widespread level, involving multiple shops and outlets using the same suppliers each of which have their foods contaminated by a foreign substance, it can destroy businesses. People don’t react well to being betrayed.
In this case, Northern Irish suppliers of meat goods to stores like Tesco, Aldi, Lidl and Iceland are the cause for concern. It’s become apparent that horse meat, of all things, has contaminated a wide variety of their beef products such as burgers and pies. Up to 29% of a burger from Tesco was shown to be constituted from horse and though these products have now been recalled and the shops in questions and proclaiming their horror, cries of disgust are rising from the public. Pork was also found to be contaminating beef products, for many eating pork is a sin and the realisation that they may have been eating it is likely to spur feelings of total revulsion.
The real question here is where the horse meat came from in the first place. Ireland isn’t known for eating horse any more than we in England are. Pigs were processed not far from the cattle and as such the pork content was easily explained but there is yet to be as much as a guess as far as the horse is concerned. They’re animals that people just don’t see as food and for many who ride or keep the animals the revelation that they may have been eating one will be akin to a dog-lover learning they’ve been eating dog.
It’s a worrying realisation and one we’ll keep an eye on. Keep your eyes on Yourwellness and we’ll make sure to keep updating on this story as and when it develops. What are your initial thoughts? Was anyone unfortunate to eat beef products from the stores in question?
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