Indeed. Probably even easier to make a meatball (you don't need egg for either).

But we have (quite widely) been deskilled over, say, two and a half generations. Even, in my experience, a mother who was dutiful about preparing fresh meals every day for her family was also reluctant, for whatever reason, to teach either of her own children any kitchen skills other than a few chores – scraping new potatoes, prepping sprouts, drying (but never washing) dishes, peeling a boiled egg.

It's taken me 10 years to get to the point I'm at now,

I'm guessing that the idea won't be to test every batch of burgers before it goes on sale but to test randomly. The idea being that if the supplier knows the test is happening they will desist from including the wrong species.

As Tesco (and I'm not picking on them) are hardly independent in the matter, I'd infinitely prefer it if a few quid of state budgets went back into state agencies doing the random testing, as led to the discovery in Ireland, as opposed to this country, where funds were apparently withdrawn for this sort of thing ages ago, presumably in some round of budget cuts, and on the basis of light touch regulation, and "we can trust Tesco can't we".

As for making your own burgers, yes it is easy. If money is no object. As for making your own burgers that work out at the same price as what you can buy economy burgers for, no, it isn't easy. Even if you use the cheapest of cheap mince - but that you couldn't do, of course, since once it's a container of mince, without testing you couldn't know whether any horse was in the mix.

This is absolutely what's been happening, with everything from food hygiene to trading standards.

Mind, I was expecting many of the newspapers to insist that self-regulation is obviously the way forward.

IIRC it was someone at the Irish FSA who thought "hang on, we've got a couple of bob left in the budget, let's get the lab to test for horse DNA". If it hadn't been for that, some would still be chomping on Trigger in blissfull ignorance

Well i heard it was part of the ongoing hunt for Shergar.

Was it this thread or another where they said that too much shergar in your diet is bad for you?

Speaking of Ireland and horses I just watched the Graham Norton show with Clare Balding, and there was a clip of a racing commentary where a horse was involved in a close finish, named "Hoof Hearted". Bloody funny.

Well Lasagne trumps burgers anyday: www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z2KFfUpITr

Well Lasagne trumps burgers anyday: www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z2KFfUpITr

Have you tried to catch a racehorse

I saw a horse caught once.

I laughed yesterday when I saw the local butchers latest sign "our burgers won't give you the trotts"

Findus are getting loads of free advertising on the BBC News channel.

Yeah, but Frankel-ly they're flogging a dead horse.

Someone has obviously thought, "Ah, we'll stick a bit of horse in there, they'll never Findus out."

The fact this is now so widespread is a bit of a concern. If the meat suppliers that big companies such as Findus and Tesco use are needing to put horse meat into the meat, you have to wonder what else they are doing. As someone else on here already mentioned, good quality horse meat is very expensive, certainly more expensive than the beef products they were supposed to be supplying. So one has to assume these horses are not from official sources or a less than top quality. So if they are doing that, what else are they doing?

Of course you know what cheese they've been putting on top of Findus lasange. Mascarpone...


Just don't ask what's in the bechamel sauce