I wonder how many people would be happy to buy horse burgers? It's ironic that the very few places that serve horse meat in the UK are very expensive, and yet here it was used because it was cheep.

To me, it's less that it's 'horse meat' as it's an unidentifiable bit of the horse because it's been ground up. That strikes me as somebody cutting corners in production and in that case, god knows what it actually was and what else was in them. It's not what it is (horse meat) it's what it isn't (something that was supposed to be in there).

I suspect if you cooked me a nice steak and it was horse I'd still eat it. I've eaten some bits of fairly unusual animals in my time..

Jon

A fellow forumite did a BBQ fairly recently with a menu that read like a zoo.

I can say with certainty that Kangaroo makes really good burgers

Seeing as our lamb often comes from half way around the world, it's a shame it's not equally available.

Yup. Ostrich is surprisingly nice too. Avoid crocodile both in life and on a menu though .

If you ever meet a crocodile in the wild you will be lucky to avoid being on the menu.

I found crocodile to be OK. In small battered deep fried pieces.

A friend went to a "hunter" barbecue a few years back, Basicly anything legal to shoot. Ranged from the usual - venison, rabbit, hare, game birds of all sizes etc . to squirrel burgers.

Dyslexic Peta - ALL MEAT IS REDRUM

I found it really dry and tasteless when I had it.
Gnu is like tough beef
Kangaroo is amazing!

That was me following our trip to South Africa - we had some of our pictures we had taken with the words "Seen it, now eating it" on them

The real issue is labelling. The fines should be sufficient to stop it happening again. If the burgers were marked horse then it would not have been an issue.

I have been wondering if the human race would survive if they had to kill their own meat. Most people wouldn't have the guts to kill an animal let alone prepare it to be eaten. I have a lot of admiration for the butchers and the work they do. I go to a butchers in Norfolk and he sources the meat locally and has people travelling for miles to buy it. If you ask for steak he'll cut it off the bone right in front of you.

Colleague said to me yesterday his kids don't like home made burgers or meatballs and they likes to have things out of a packet. Where do they think the meat comes from? I wouldn't put up with that and he hates it but his wife let's them get away with it.

I've also asked vegetarians if they would eat meat if their life depended on it. One of them said yes he would if it was a matter of life or death.

I know I certainly could not kill anything. Even gutting a fish is something that I prefer not to do. Likewise I admire people who can prepare meat and fish. Once I have the meat or fish fillets I am less aware that it might have been walking about or swimming not long ago.

It is something you get accustomed to.
In India I bought a freshly slaughtered chicken (we chose the live chicken and it was killed and plucked in front of us, the safest way by far to buy meat there)
In France you can buy rabbits head on and my mum is squeamish so I used to cut the heads off before cooking when I was young.
I think butchering or seeing the meat butchered makes you respect it more and stops you from deep frying it etc

Its only really (in the west) in the last 75 years or so that we have got away from the “sharp end” of meat production. Lots of families up to and including the war would have had where possible chickens etc as an extra source of protein and maybe access to a “Communal pig”

Personally I have killed Rabbits and Pigeons (via Shotgun) and with training don’t see any reason why I would not do other livestock

Post war too. My paternal grandparents kept chickens in their back garden and would slaughter the odd one on a special occasion, although they were mostly kept for eggs. That would have been late 60's/early 70's. Not saying it was prevalent but that generation that learned to do in the war and they'd have had no real reason to stop doing it until the advent of very cheap meat in supermarkets, which came much later.


I can't really imagine the circumstance where everyone would have to kill their own food. Even if you assume no supermarkets or industrialised meat production, we've had hunters/butchers since we evolved as a society. As long as you can make or do something valuable yourself, you'll always be able to get someone else to give you some meat in return for it.