IMANE KURDI I remember as I child one Eid watching with horror as the lamb we had played with for the last few days was served up on a platter. I had escaped to the roof when the lamb was being slaughtered and cried. I did not eat its meat, but a few weeks later I agreed to eat the meat of another lamb I had not known. I accepted there and then that my attitude was hypocritical, but my love of meat meant that becoming vegetarian – the only ethical means available to a child horrified at the killing of animals! - was too big a lifestyle change. So I stopped thinking of meat as coming from a cute animal, but saw it only in its cut-up, packaged form: here was a steak, here was a burger, here was a chicken drumstick. The more it was processed, the better. Burgers, lasagne, meatballs, chicken nuggets, all those dishes where the meat doesn't really look like a recognizable piece of animal flesh became my favorites. I remembered this story this week as I watched the European horsemeat scandal continue to unfold. How far the world has gone from when you bought an animal alive, slaughtered it, cut it and cooked it, to a world where meat is traded internationally like any other commodity with tons of meat being moved across countries from abattoirs to storage facilities to meat processing plants to food processing plants then to supermarkets before reaching our plates. Do we really need so many steps in the food chain? The obvious answer is no. You can buy fresh meat from a butcher who has cut up the carcass himself and who knows what he is selling you. In Britain, you can even buy meat directly from farms and have it delivered directly to your home with a certificate telling you the name of the cow and when it was slaughtered. Not only do you know you are not eating horsemeat, but you know what the animal has been fed and how it has been reared. More importantly, the meat tastes great, much better than the cheaper meat you can buy elsewhere. In an ideal world we would all eat meat that was ethically reared, perhaps we would eat less meat but at least we would eat only the good stuff. In the real world, we need meat that is affordable and easily available. We also need to be able to eat out, in restaurants and cafeterias, and feel confident that what we are eating is what we think it is. So what has gone wrong? In essence, the case in hand is one of massive fraud. As the facts stand at the moment, Spanghero, a French meat processor, bought horsemeat from Romania, via a Dutch trader, which it processed as beef and sent labelled as beef to food processor Comigel, who then made lasagnes and other dishes for Findus and other brands, that landed in supermarket shelves in 13 countries. This happened over several months, involving an estimated 750 tons of meat. The first question that screams loud and clear is can they not tell the difference between horse and beef? Does it not smell different, taste stronger, have a deeper color than beef? Do they not test the meat they buy? It does seem a little hard to believe. Testing the authenticity of meat is not something that is normally done, what is tested is the safety of meat. And, as far as we can tell, the meat sold was safe; it did not contain substances harmful to human consumption. Although there is now the fear that some horsemeat may have contained Bute, an equine painkiller that is not cleared for human consumption. Then there is the issue of labeling and traceability. Somewhere along the way, someone deliberately mislabeled horsemeat as beef, that is the criminal fraud element in the story, but it also exposed the chinks in the system. When you eat in a restaurant in France, there is a sign telling you the country of origin of the meat, but on food packaging the mention is "origin EU". Eating meat from Romania is not the same as eating meat from France; they do not have the same standards and practices. Clearly both testing and labeling need to be improved and EU ministers meeting in Brussels are working to put a more effective system in place. The underlying issue is one of pricing. Horsemeat is much cheaper than beef, about a third cheaper, and when times are hard, it is sadly not that surprising that some suppliers and processors turn to cutting corners in order to stay in business. Had the Food Safety Authority of Ireland not uncovered the presence of horse and pig DNA in beef burgers, those eating them would not have noticed a difference in taste. Perhaps we should pay more for meat and eat less of it, insisting on quality rather than low prices. And what of the pig DNA found in those burgers? As a Muslim, that worries me more; all that focus on horsemeat may be missing the more important point. The difference is that the horsemeat was a case of fraud, while the pig traces were a case of cross-contamination. There were only traces of pig DNA, 0.1 percent, and not in all the burgers that were tested. Discussions are now in place to ensure that plants making products such as beef burgers who also handle pork in their other lines put in the necessary safeguards that ensure that there is no cross-contamination. So should we be eating burgers, lasagne, and meatballs? I was amused by an email I received this week, a grocery store invited us to a cookery workshop on how to make lasagne. — Imane Kurdi is a Saudi writer on European affairs. She can be reached at [email protected]
