SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
After becoming somewhat used to food scares from China, now we have sleazy operators in Europe too.
From the ABC News article:
Authorities have arrested at least 66 people in a European food scam which sold horse meat unfit for human consumption.
European Union police coordinating organization Europol announced Sunday that eight nations cooperated in the operation. In Spain, 65 people face a series of charges relating to public health, money laundering and animal abuse.
The operation took several months and the chief suspect, a Dutch businessman, was arrested in Belgium in April.
Spain's Civil Guard said that the criminal ring acquired horses in Spain and Portugal that were "in poor shape, old, or had been designated 'not apt for consumption.'" After falsifying paperwork and substituting microchips used to identify the horses, the animals were slaughtered and the meat shipped to Belgium.
The Civil Guard said that the profits from the illegal meat could reach 20 million euros ($23 million) a year.
The case was linked to a 2013 scandal when Irish authorities detected beef burgers containing horse meat.
Is it still safe to consume Soylent?
Additional details at CNN.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Monday July 17 2017, @06:19PM (12 children)
I spent the summer of 1993 at CERN. Someone warned me to carefully examine restaurant menus to determine whether one is ordering horse meat.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 17 2017, @06:24PM (4 children)
I've been told that horse meat is very tasty but if you where at CERN it was probably the quantum black holes that spin off from the accelerator that are the real danger
(Score: 3, Insightful) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Monday July 17 2017, @08:25PM (3 children)
I was told to ask for one at the safety office, but I decided instead to just not walk into a motherfucking particle beam.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 17 2017, @08:33PM (2 children)
WIMP
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 17 2017, @09:52PM
i think he got in the way of the beam, he'd be no Weakly Interacting Magnetic Particle. He'd have the beam burn right through him--it'd be pretty active and dynamic.
it happened to one guy before at some previous collider ring and he died. cooked right through him and it took a bit for them to clearly diagnose the issues he had.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday July 18 2017, @06:04PM
Your.
Move.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by KiloByte on Monday July 17 2017, @06:37PM (6 children)
What's wrong with horse meat? Only the US has this taboo; the rest of countries eat horses rarely only because they're harder to farm in enclosed stalls or on a tiny pasture, thus unfit for industrial mass farming.
Disposing of sick and old horses not fit for consumption is another matter, but that's no different from passing cows no vet would allow.
Ceterum censeo systemd esse delendam.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Monday July 17 2017, @07:57PM (2 children)
Horsemeat is a taboo in most English speaking countries since the British upper-class and wealthy white Americans join equestrian clubs and volunteer at "Save Seabiscuit From Evil Butchers" type charities for ivy-league applications.
compiling...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 17 2017, @08:03PM (1 child)
Equestrian clubs being code for Knights and armies, you can't ride into battle on a cow or even bull
we like the animals that like us
(Score: 2) by t-3 on Tuesday July 18 2017, @04:29PM
You /can/ ride into battle on a cow or bull, they're just more valuable as food... People have been riding cows and bulls (really riding not rodeo shit) for as long as horses.
(Score: 1) by Atatsu on Monday July 17 2017, @08:49PM (2 children)
Probably because to a lot of people in the US a horse is more than just an animal. Same with dogs. Eating dogs would be weird as shit IMO. People get sentimental about critters, you know.
It wasn't all that long ago in the US where you were as good as dead if you were found without your horse. At least in "fly over" country.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday July 17 2017, @09:36PM
But of course! What would you be able to eat without it?
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday July 17 2017, @09:53PM
Yeah, actually, it was over a century ago that that was important in terms of the market for horse meat. You can tell, because that's when the horse meat market suddenly took a dive [priceonomics.com] in the U.S. and made it the "cheap meat" of choice for unscrupulous butchers. Before that, horse meat was mostly eaten -- as were many domesticated farm animals -- when they were old and less useful for work anymore. They weren't the meat of choice, but few farmers or frontiersmen would waste that much good meat and bury a horse without consuming it unless the animal was severely diseased or something. But by 1900 or so, there were lots of excess horses in the U.S. as the growth of trains and even new automobiles took hold.
Food taboos are almost always a confluence of irrational cultural constraints. Some cultures love to eat insects; in the U.S., they are mostly taboo. It's important to remember that most "disgust" reactions are developed by children watching adult reactions, not because of some innate rationale. In many cultures, for example, many organ meats are prized because they are high in nutrients -- they often are offered specifically to children (or venerated adults) for that reason. (And yes, children in such cultures are often thrilled to consume them.) But in modern American culture (and to various extents in European cultures), organ meats are often viewed as weird or even disgusting.
Horsemeat is no different. it's perfectly palatable, though I've only had it on a few occasions. I think it falls in a slightly different category from pets like dogs and cats, because there's a larger and much more widespread cultural taboo against carnivore meat. It's a similar thing to what keeps many cultures (e.g., Jews, Muslims) from eating pork from omnivorous pigs: beyond "pet" status, there was traditionally more concern in many cultures about eating animals which themselves may have eaten "bad" foods (e.g., wild dogs are frequently scavengers, eating a lot of stuff that would seem unfit for human consumption; food taboos are sometimes based on that sort of rationale: even cultures which consume insects regularly are often a little more hesitant about things like dung beetles).
By the way, it seems horse meat taboos have probably been influenced significantly by religion too. As early as 732, the Catholic Church discouraged eating horse meat [mentalfloss.com] because of its association with "pagans," though even good Catholics likely still ate their animals when they gave out. But religious perspectives probably contributed most to the modern Western taboo.