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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."
Try the meatballs, they're the dogs bollocks
Watch those corners
I make burgers out of 100% beef and they are not steak
Probably safer, too. Ever hear of mad horse disease?
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
@Freddie_UK: A woman has been taken to hospital after eating horsemeatburgers. Her condition is said to be stable.
@BobJWilliams: I expect this only relates to those mini-burgers you have as snacks. You know, the horse d'oeuvres.
@JohnMoynes: I get all my horsemeat from an independent dodgy butcher.
@DiamondsIRL: Are you in favour of Horsemeat in your burgers? Yay or Neigh?
@GBretman: So horsemeat has been found in TescoProducts but a spokesman says It's bollocks
@pinkyperfection: I had a tesco burger and now I'm feeling a little horse
@brucel: Those Aldi horse burgers were nice, but I prefer My Lidl Pony
@PaulLewis: Scientist: "Sir, we've discovered horse meat in your burgers." Tesco boss: "Why the long face?"
@PensionsMonkey: There was an old woman who swallowed a horse, she'd been to Tesco, of course.
@elhaydo: Good thing about these horse puns is it's stopped all the sick Jimmy Saddle jokes
The best #horsemeat Twitter gags following Tesco burger blunder
Deceptive trade practices is the problem.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Actually horse meat is pretty good; I like it more than beef, and around here the price is comparable. It's tastier than beef, and also has fewer adverse consequences for your health. Horse meat becomes more tender as the animal ages - unlike cattle - and a rather larger percentage of the animal is good meat (although each horse eats more than cattle yielding similar meat mass). Of course, horses are often though of as companion animals, (disclaimer: I own and ride a horse) and it's not customary to eat any animal you gave a name to. Our horse has a name, and the kids would not tolerate any discussion of eating him...
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Vegans don't have enough meat in them to make a decent burger.
The patties are 100% beef.
It's not about the ethics of the animal in question, it's about the promises made by the manufacturer (no mention of horse) and the questions of quality control, correct process and oversight.
My concern isn't "OMG HORSIES!"
My concern is "fuck you consumer" as they pump the product full of whatever they think they can get away with to turn a profit.
Now there's one hoopy frood who really knows where his towel is!
That's partly because it was made illegal in 2006 or 2007 (indirectly, they defunded the government inspectors of horsemeat so, no inspection, no sale). That caused a lot of horsemeat to be shipped to other countries. However, back in 2011 the horsemeat inspectors got funded again so now you can eat a horse if you are hungry enough.
FWIW, the absolute best piece of meat I've ever eaten was horse - in the italian part of switzerland, I ordered it as a lark. They served it so rare it was bloody and I could barely take the first bite. But it was amazingly tender and not gamy at all. Better than the best filet mignon. However I've been told my experience is not the norm, the stuff is usually stringy.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
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!
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You buy your burgers premade! I eat burgers frequently, but I make them myself. it would never occur to me to purchase them premade. Just grind the meat, take a bunch of the result, mix it up with some garlic and onions, and a few other species, then pack it gently with your hands, and that's it!
it's the grease in the meat that keep it together. You don't need anything else.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
They never tell us how much dog is in our hot dogs either :(
Yes, but you die from exhaustion telling everyone you are a vegan. Bad trade off.
You might be close.
When I inquired as to why a local fast food restaurant was selling "shakes", not "milkshakes", I found out that they could not sell them as "milk" shakes because there was not enough milk in them. They were selling sweetened sawdust ( aka "cellulose" ).
OK. It tastes good. Not all that good for you, just sugar and indigestibles, no nutritive content at all from what I can tell. But pleasurable to ingest. OK, at least I know what it is and make my decisions accordingly.
( incidentally, their coffee is made with some topping which is completely indigestible to me. I found out during a bout of flu. It all came out, processed, but untouched. Lots of it. I think it was sweetened and foamed Olestra.
Same with the horse meat. I will consider it no big deal if it is accurately represented on its bill of contents. It can be ground up worms for what I care. If it is biologically compatible with me and it tastes good, I'll go for it.
Personally, I am far more concerned with pesticide and other biocide remnants in my food. I am far more concerned with genetically modified stuff than things that have been in the food chain since life began. I do not know how well I or others may metabolize sheep designed to put spider silk proteins in their milk or corn designed to make its own pesticide. I guess time will tell.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
Cats and dogs are carnivores and on top of the food chain where the less than healthy stuff gets concentrated. All herbivores are good to eat, unless they're fed odd diets or medicated.
Flourescent (adj): smelling like ground wheat.
I would purchase them again today.
Horses are not especially more intelligent than cows.
Horse meat is also very tasty -- I like it better than beef. Unfortunately, it's very difficult to buy where I live. One restaurant offered it, but there was a huge uproar about it and I believe they've now taken it off their menu.
It's really not fair that I should have to change my diet because of a bunch of loud-mouthed activisits. Either meat is legal or it isn't, and -- except for reasons of public health -- I don't see why some species should be considered 'OK' and others not.
In California, it is actually illegal to eat horse. It was voted on in a proposition a few years back.
Neat! Did they also say why? Or was it a spur of the moment thing?
20 minutes into the future
Various people have commented that this isn't about the fact it was horse, that it's all about deception or poor food quality.
Actually it's about food safety, traceability, and the long shadow of BSE.
After the BSE scandal, the UK and EU introduced some of the strictest standards and processes for the tracking and tracing of meat in the world. These recent cases have demonstrated that these processes do not appear to be working.
The scandal here is not that supermarkets were selling burgers with horsemeat in, it was that they *didn't know* they were selling horsemeat. In theory they should be able to trace every gram of meat in their burgers.
Somehow meat of unknown origin was getting into the food chain.
If we can't prevent horsemeat getting in then we can't prevent infected beef from getting in.
That's the real scandal, that the world's toughest food traceability system appears not to work properly.
Paul Leader
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.....
Yep. Angus beef: A strain of cattle that grows faster then most, ranchers love that. Lately a trademark into which much advertising has been sunk.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
They fed an entire horse to a rat. The rat died. So California figured it must cause cancer or something.
Have gnu, will travel.
As a Hindu, my burgers have no beef. Only chicken and sometimes bacon. However, horse is not verboten, so if I knew that a 'beef' burger was actually 100% horsemeat, as opposed to 29%, I'd have no problems w/ it.