"Yes, you can see coarse ground meat but it could as easily be coarse ground horse as beef"

Quite true although it doesn't unduly worry me on account that I don't suffer from cute horse syndrome. And it does seem to be restricted to all the economy ranges which I think taste awful anyway.

I either make my own or keep a few M&S or similar premium brand ready meals for quick use in the freezer which tend to headline the label with a specific breed of beef. If any of these is found to have non-beef traces there will truly be a collapse in consumer confidence.

Bingalau

"I too have eaten horse in the past having got a taste for it during the war when it was fed to dogs on a farm where I worked."

I hope you weren't depriving those poor doggys of their hard earned dinner!!!

Or were you in disguise as a basset hound?

;o)

Thank goodness for the NHS and this entirely rational explanation of the phenylbutazone situation.

When it was used as a drug for humans side effects occurred in about 1 in 30,000 patients. That's very, very rare.

The fear about 'bute' is being driven by either a failure to understand or deliberately ignoring how drugs work.

'Bute' is, generally, metabolized within 8 hours. A horse treated with it would, therefore, have little or none left after that time.

Drugs, also, cost money so the chance of a horse, known to be on its way to slaughter, receiving 'bute' within 8 hours of slaughter are further diminished.

The chance of there being any bute in horsemeat, no matter how criminally procured, is small and the chance of anyone suffering harm as a result is, almost certainly, much lower than the 1 in 30,000 found at therapeutic doses.

The reason for discontinuing 'bute' in humans was that other drugs offered as good pain relief without the side effects. If no other NSAIDs were available 'bute' would still be in use in humans.

We used to jokingly call hors d'oeuvres horses doovries,now they probably are.