When Canadian consumers stop for a burger or throw a frozen lasagna in the oven they assume the ingredients listed on the label are actually in the food.
That’s what European consumers were thinking until it was recently discovered that the beef they have been eating for years actually contains horse. The other red meat is back on the menu.
This food security alert has everybody thinking about food fraud. Somewhere along the global food chain somebody is mixing horse in with the hamburger.
I first became a victim of food fraud at a very young age. My mother would secretly shred carrots into the spaghetti sauce to get us kids to eat more vegetables. I think she even threw in the odd zucchini.
We never suspected a thing as we pounded down our pasta. Then one day we caught her with a grater in one hand and a juicy carrot in the other. She was busted.
After that we were suspicious of any unusual flavour or different looking ingredient, especially in soups or stews. However, we were on the lookout for stray vegetables and never suspected horse meat.
With DNA testing, food fraud is getting much easier to detect. It is now possible to identify all the critters in your shepherd’s pie.
The horse meat found in European beef originated in Romania. That country exports 14,000 tons of the stuff every year, properly processed and labeled for sale.
It is regularly eaten in South America, China, Japan and several European countries including France, Italy and Switzerland. It is fine-grained, tasty and full of horsey goodness.
Somewhere in France horse meat is being secretly blended with hamburger and labeled 100 per cent beef. There is no health risk to the general public. This is an economic crime.
Beef is one of many products that are part of a lucrative food fraud network in countries around the world.
Many types of fish and seafood are also sold under false pretenses
A recent DNA study of market-ready fish revealed that one-third was mislabeled.
The red snapper was found to be 87 per cent tilapia. More than half of the so-called tuna was a different species altogether.
Some sushi bars were found to serve up to 74 per cent fraudulent fish. Restaurants and grocery stores are also part of this seafood deception.
Some other targets for food fraud and substitution include milk, apple juice, olive oil, ground coffee and ground spices.
Those tasty little berry bits in your muffins and cereal may actually be made of sugar, starch, artificial flavour, cellulose gum and assorted dyes (blue #2, red #40, green #3). That’s what passes for blueberries these days.
Is there any horse in our local hamburger supply? I don’t know but I’m pretty sure nobody is taking DNA samples to find out.
Commodities move around the world very quickly these days. Supply lines are huge and intricate. There is money to be made and food fraud could show up anywhere.
But horse meat is in the headlines and consumers are perplexed.
Some are outraged. Others are more forgiving.
After all, it’s only a little bit of horse.
Actually, there are worse things to find in your food than horse meat.
Anyone who has ever found a hair in their mashed potatoes will attest to that.
Personally I’m not really concerned about horse in the hamburger.
I just don’t think they should pass it off as beef. It should be proudly labeled “Borse” or “Heef” or even “Horsebeef.”
Then we can decide for ourselves whether to add it to the spaghetti sauce with the carrots and zucchini.
