More on the horsemeat scandal today as Tesco announces that it will be DNA testing its burgers. DNA testing is expensive but perhaps that’s the point. As might be expected, Tesco is super-keen to reassure its customers that something’s being done. Here’s Tim Smith, Tesco’s group technical director commenting on the decision in the FT:
We want to leave customers in no doubt that we will do whatever it takes to ensure the quality of their food and that the food they buy is exactly what the label says it is.
But I can’t help thinking it would be cheaper to set up some checks earlier in the production process to ensure that the anomalous 29 per cent (that’s over one in four) of the animals hanging on a hook in the abattoir look more like a cow than a horse. How technical can the solution be? It’s actually fairly hard to serve up horses in this country – according to the FT’s Tim Hayward (who clearly has tried):
Although it is not illegal to sell or eat horse in the UK, it is easier to obtain ostrich, zebra or kudu for those of us who have tried. Getting horse into a burger here requires the same level of negligence or fraud as getting dog or rat meat into it.
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There’s something weird about Tesco’s production line starting off like a Hieronymus Bosch painting, rife with smuggled horses, kudu and clumsy children, and ending in a lab, poured over expensively by molecular scientists – “Aha! Zebra DNA! Thank God we’re finally doing something to get them out of our burgers. Nifty fuckers”. There must be a better way.
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