Sunday, February 17, 2013

Horse Meat in Europe 'Scandal' (British Media is Rubbish)

Last week, yet another scandal emerged in England around mislabeled 'lasagne'. (BTW, who, on this planet calls lasagna 'lasagne' but ignorant Brits?)

Apparently the bolognese sauce was supposed to be all beef when in reality was either all horse meat or, at most, partially beef.

Most -if not all- British papers quickly -and stupidly- pointed their fingers at Romania via a media bullying campaign. After all, it is much easier to bully the new kid on the block than do some real journalism and get to the bottom of the problem.

As it turned out, a French firm and some intermediaries from Cyprus and the Netherlands (as well as British firms) were the real culprit for the selling of horse meat as beef and the British immediately changed their tune.

Romania was not to blame anymore as this was an 'European' problem. As if Romania were not a part of Europe. The real problem is not that people have been eating 'lasagne' with horse meat for who knows how long but that they did not know about it. Really? Is that a problem that warrants such a big over-reaction? Nobody got sick or died after eating horse meat and instead of having a debate about perhaps eating horse meat on an open fashion we are having a scandal about whether food labels are accurate.

In my opinion this affair was labeled a 'scandal' only because the meat originated in Eastern Europe (and perhaps Ireland).

Food mislabeling is not that uncommon as it was portrayed (see this or this for blatant examples of fish mislabeling) and the fact that the British media can be allowed to be so openly and aggressively anti Romania is tantamount to mass hysteria at best and ignorance at worst.

Food labels have been inaccurate and uninformative for a very long time.The British media thought that they had found a bloody gem of a problem to attribute to Eastern Europe (mainly Romania) to satiate their appetite for barbaric ideological practices.

British media has proven yet again to be junk media that plays inhumanely dirty games against transiently weak members of the European Union. Shame on you, Britain!




2 comments:

  1. I agree horsemeat is fine. Nothing wrong with it really, but it's still a scandal because:

    A: It's illegal to mislabel food
    B: It's even worse when the mislabeling is intentional
    C: There has been no quality control of the meat.

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    Replies
    1. I get that but I do not get the magnitude of the commotion.

      Also, I was trying to point out that this illegality happened in Western Europe where supposedly -if you were to have read the British newspapers on this matter- the level of honesty is 'far superior' to the one found in other Eastern European countries.

      I found the depiction of the horse meat 'scandal' in the British media completely arrogant and I felt like I needed to point out that the distribution of thievery does not follow national borders, contrary to what is being 'reported' in an ever crescendo media bullying frenzy targeting Romania (and, partially, Poland).

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