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How Much Beef Is In Your Burger?
dgharmon writes in with an interesting article about how much (or how little) beef is in a UK burger. "The presence of horsemeat in value beefburgers has caused a furore. But what is usually in the patties? It has been a sobering week for fans of the beefburger. Tesco have used full-page adverts in national newspapers to apologize for selling burgers in the UK that were found to contain 29% horsemeat. Traces of horse DNA were also detected by the Food Standards Agency of Ireland in products sold by Iceland, Lidl, Aldi and Dunnes. But a beefburger rarely contains 100% beef."
I make burgers out of 100% beef and they are not steak
Unless you get a horse that has been in the US racing circuit and has been fed steroids, antibiotics and bog knows what for most of it's life. I'd bet that the horsemeat in the British burgers was never tested for same.
Inthe EU, every horse is required (by EU law) to have a record of medications given to it in its entire lifetime. In particular, the record must state whether any particular item given would render it "unfit" for human consumption. There are several such medications, but they are not commonly used; all horses I know of would be fit for consumption on that basis. Of course, inspection of the horse's carcase by a veterinarian is required before it is deemed suitable for use as meat, since eating something which had died from certain diseases might be unpleasant, whatever the animal.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Here is a video of a TV show Heston Blumenthal did in the UK, which demonstrated how you can make a burger using only chunks of sirloin and salt as the binding agent.
Looks pretty good to me!
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
No, the name 'angus beef' has legal protection. Either it's certified angus beef, or it's breaking the law. It's one of the few meat products McD sells which the consumer actually knows what it is.....