Is it beef, or what?

By Bob Gaydos

The horse-meat-in-ground-beef scandal that broke in Europe at the beginning of the year has spawned numerous investigations there as well as a booming business for food-testing companies. But it has thus far not crossed the pond to the United States.

Or has it?

Americans are famous, even notorious, for thinking that the oceans and our inflated sense of entitlement and superiority, protect us from many of the major ills that plague the rest of the world. We don’t eat horses, we say; we don’t slaughter horses, we say. Therefore, we say, there’s no danger that horse meat has been mixed into some of our hamburger meat.

It’s a comfortable way to look at things, if not an entirely realistic one. And this American, for one, had his comfort level shaken recently on reading a headline that asked, “Is the mob involved in horse meat scandal.”

Duh. Of course “the mob,” however one defines it, on whatever continent one chooses, is involved in the horse meat scandal. If there is money to be made by cheating, lying or stealing from others, “the mob,” in all its forms will be involved. And this crime has the advantage of being non-violent. All it takes is some people willing to go along, for a price or a threat, with the scheme. Plus, we’re talking about doctoring ground beef, for Pete’s sake. Everyone eats it and no one suspects it.

Until now.

And it’s not just the possible mob connection that has raised more suspicions that the scandal is going to get a lot bigger. Last week, in London, where the horse meat scandal is in full bloom, samples of curries and kebabs from six food outlets were tested by scientists hired by the BBC. The scientists found one burger contained no beef, save for blood and heart. One curry sample did contain meat but, a BBC spokesperson said, “that meat was not lamb, not pork, nor was it chicken or beef. Not horse. and not goat either.” The London Daily Mail wondered if it could be dog meat, noting that dog meat had been found in samples of pet food in Spain.

The horse meat scandal has spread from a meat-cutting plant in Wales to the entire British Isles, as horse meat from Poland has turned up in beef at Burger King and Tesco, as well as in major supermarkets and brand name processed foods, including Birds Eye. Brits have no delusions anymore about their food being what it says on the label. Nor do Swedes, since horse meat was found in the furniture giant’s Swedish meatballs.

There’s more. And far from London. In South Africa, a team of university scientists, curious because of the European scandal, found traces of human tissue in beef samples meant for human consumption in nine provinces across the nation. According to research.com, the scientists said there was “no threat” in eating the samples, which one scientist speculated could have been from a worker cutting himself or picking his nose at a meat-processing plant. Yumm. (Or, connecting some other dots, what a convenient way to get rid of a troublemaker.)

The South African scientists also reported that nearly half of the “game” samples they tested were, in fact, beef, and that ostrich sausages, a local treat, were found to contain pork and even kangaroo meat. The scientists were not concerned about the obvious intentional mislabeling.

Meanwhile, back in the good old USA, where we don’t slaughter horses, the governor of Oklahoma just signed a bill authorizing the slaughtering of horses. Similar efforts are being made in New Mexico, Washington and elsewhere. Oklahomans by a wide margin opposed the bill, but legislators paid them no mind. They justified the bill by noting that the horses slaughtered could not be sold for human consumption in the United States.

Really? There are no inspectors or food-processing executives willing to take bribes? Horses from this country have been sold to slaughterhouses in Canada and Mexico. Shipments from those countries cannot legally be sold to American firms, but they do pass through a port in Texas on the way elsewhere. Seems I’ve heard a rumor about “the mob” having some kind of influence on the docks.

Still not worried? What’s wrong with a little horse meat in my burger? you ask. Obviously the moral argument about Americans not eating animals who are pets, companions or sporting teammates doesn’t sway you. How about the possibility that the horse meat may be tainted with medications widely used on horses in the United States, including phenylbutazone (bute), a pain reliever which is a known carcinogen for humans.

These drugs cannot be administered to horses raised for food in the U.S. (which is none), but the horse slaughter lobbyists are angling to buy and slaughter the large supply of wild mustangs that have been rounded up as well as former race horses, rodeo horses and personal steeds without a home. Those horses have all likely been medicated and there is not likely to be anyone checking each horse for drugs at a slaughterhouse, where speed is a priority.

I’ll toss in the fact that it’s tough enough to know what’s in genuine ground beef, since it comes from many sources and I will resist the temptation to mention that some Americans suspect that, like in Spain, shelter dogs — and cats — may be winding up in pet food in this country. One step removed.

It is a fetid stew and very profitable for a select few. Perhaps Americans will someday get around to caring about their food labels being reliable and factual. Or maybe start shopping with an eye to wanting to know what they’re eating. But it sure would also be reassuring if someone in a position of authority started testing this system and putting checks in place to serve as a backup to that big ocean in which we place so much trust.

 bob@zestoforange.com

Mustangs running free ... for how long?

By Bob Gaydos

Let’s talk about horse meat.

What’s that? You don’t want to talk about horse meat? Fine. Then I’ll talk and you listen. Please.

I’m talking about horse meat because, as some of you may have heard, there is a horse meat scandal engulfing Europe. It started with horse meat showing up in what were supposedly beef burgers in England and Ireland. It has subsequently shown up in packaged lasagna in Italy and in Swedish meatballs marketed by Ikea, which I, probably like you, thought was just a furniture company. Ikea quickly pulled all its meatballs off the market in Europe and Southeast Asia, even though the horse meat was detected only in a couple of samples in Czechoslovakia. There’s a good name to protect and Ikea customers were buying what they thought was ground beef, not horse meat. A smart business move. Some packaged meat products were also found to contain horse meat. Calls for more testing are spreading across the continent.

Let’s be clear. This is not a safety issue. Well, not primarily — some drugs given to horses can be dangerous, especially for unknowing consumers. Horse meat is a regular part of the diet in some countries, France and Khazakhstan, for example, where history has set precedence for eating horse meat. But a lot of people prefer not to eat horse meat for moral, personal reasons and purposely mislabeling beef products that contain horse meat (which is cheaper to produce because of fewer controls) is not just criminal, it is, in a very real sense, immoral.

So what? you say. Americans don’t eat horse meat and don’t slaughter horses. Supposedly no horse meat is imported into this country. Do I have to worry about horse meat showing up in Big Macs or tacos? (Probably not.) Then it’s not our problem, right?

Not so fast. The world economy is simply too inter-related for such an easy (typically American) dismissal — not our problem; move on. Mainstream American media news stories that finally caught up with the story, which broke in January, detailed Europe’s horse meat situation and went so far, geographically speaking, as mentioning meat suppliers in Mexico, but no farther.

But it turns out that there is a very real possibility that some of the horse meat being shipped out of Mexico — and Canada — includes horses bought from American businesses legally prohibited from selling to horse slaughterers and, furthermore, includes wild horses, protected presumably forever by federal law to roam free on federal land, perhaps to be adopted by caring humans and to die in peace. Not in a slaughterhouse.

Americans by and large don’t eat horse meat (polls show some 80 percent oppose slaughtering horses). Horse meat used to show up in pet food, but the animal decades ago passed into that special category we reserve for dogs and cats. Americans don’t eat animals who are pets, companions, participants in sports or, indeed, partners in war, all of which the horse has been in America. Spike is a companion; Secretariat was a champion.

This is not a matter of taste, but respect, even love, for fellow inhabitants of this planet. Americans do not raise horses for their meat and we recognize the rightness, if not the “right” of some 35,000 wild mustangs (the number once was in the millions) to run free on millions of acres of federal land in the West.

At least most of us do. Again, we’re talking ethics and morals here, not personal tastes in meat products. A law protecting horses from slaughter expired in 2011, but Congress in 2005 refused to fund inspections for horse slaughterhouses and, without inspections, you can’t operate a slaughterhouse in this country.

That situation has held until today. But there is an effort in New Mexico to authorize a horse slaughterhouse and Oklahoma is also debating whether to legalize the slaughter of horses. And the federal Bureau of Land Management has been under attack by advocacy groups for failing to protect the mustangs from what are said to be abusive, unnecessary efforts to cull herds through helicopter-driven roundups, for putting some 45,000 in “holding corrals” and for allegedly allowing thousands of them to be sold for slaughter in Mexico and Canada, to be shipped worldwide.

Ken Salazar recently resigned as Secretary of the Interior, admitting that the wild horses management issue was the toughest one he had faced. The wild horse advocacy groups counter that he never really faced the issue, being a former rancher who dealt with companies that sold horses to Mexican slaughterhouses. His would-be successor, Sally Jewell, is being pressured by horse advocacy groups to explain her positions on issues affecting wild horses, who must routinely battle energy companies and ranchers and farmers, whose livestock far outnumber the mustangs, for use of public lands.

While the issue has some currency, I suspect it will pass quietly from the American landscape, unless some horse meat is detected in a package of Swanson’s frozen meat loaf. Then, all hell will break loose and people will demand to know how that happened. How did they get horses to slaughter? Where were the inspectors? What do you mean these were wild horses? Didn’t Congress protect them in 1971, calling them “living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit of the West”? Didn’t that mean for life? Who’s protecting the horses?

Because, you see, Americans don’t eat horse meat.

bob@zestoforange.com