How long have you been eating horse meat?

The horsemeat scandal set off alarm bells on January 15. The trigger was the announcement by the Irish Food Safety Agency (FSAI) that it had detected horsemeat in beef burgers. From there, and tracing back the web of suppliers of different origins in the already complex food chain, the case quickly spread like wildfire to other products: from Findus lasagne, Nestlé tortellini, Buittoni ravioli, La Cocinera cannelloni, to IKEA meatballs, to give a few examples of prestigious brands, which are now suffering economic losses due to the withdrawal of these products from the market, and are affected by consumer distrust. In the large-scale food industry, the chains are very complex and the different ingredients of a dish can have very different origins, but this does not mean that there can be risks derived from their consumption. In this case, horsemeat poses no health risk, but the key to fraud lies in the price and labeling: horsemeat is 8 times cheaper than beef. The detection occurs at this moment and not before due to the evolution of the genetic determinations, which are highly specific, being its possibilities of error, very low. On the other hand, the finding of traces of a chemical additive in the meat, such as phenylbutazone, an analgesic used in horses and dogs, which can affect the blood balance, as it causes aplastic anemia and a decrease in leukocytes, would represent a health problem. The European Union, which prohibits phenylbutazone from being part of the food chain, but not its use as a medicine, has approved the reinforcement of controls on meat products to find out where the fraud of horse meat labeled as beef reaches, agreeing to finance75% of tests for all suppliers of these meat products: a) To determine in minced meat preparations if this contains horse meat, by DNA determinations. b) To rule out the presence of the chemical phenylbutazone in the meat.

Have you ever stopped to think how long we have been eating horse meat without knowing it? It is very likely that we will be able to include it in the list of exotic foods we have tried. J.M.Berrio