It seems eerily coincidental that they’ve identified Richard III in the midst of the frozen ‘beef’ fiasco. For those not in the UK, frozen burgers and now frozen lasagnes have been tested and found to contain horse meat, some up to 100%. Oops.

The urge to be a bit smug as a veggie is there, but I remember back in the day when I was in school, and an adamant carnivore, a popular burger establishment was found to have horse meat posing as beef in it’s burgers too. The fierce debates that raged were polarised (if not hormonally driven). The major argument against was ‘you can’t eat a horse because it has a personality’ or ‘it’s graceful’ and such and so on. Whilst the emotional debate raged, I had the same feeling that is surfacing again now which is if you’re prepared to eat the food you should understand the process or at least acknowledge what you are ingesting. I bet many people visiting an abattoir would think twice about their neatly packed (and artificially inflated) chicken breasts.

I’m not against others eating meat at all, carnivores exist in all tiers of the pyramid but we need to be more responsible in our production of it.

Making emotional distinctions about which meat we eat seems strange when what we buy in a supermarket barely  resembles the breathing creature  it once was anyway. Just because eating horse is unconventional, doesn’t mean it’s wrong. My cousin went to visit her father in Kazakhstan and was treated to a welcome gift of tinned horse meat (and a fork), there it’s considered a delicacy. One man’s trash is another’s treasure. You wouldn’t dream of finding beef in many places in India I’m sure.

We eat for joy, for fun, but gluttony has cancelled out another major reason – nourishment. The balance between ourselves and our environment has been all but destroyed. We’ve completely lost touch with our ecosystem and our effect on it. Through greed and laziness we demand perfectly shaped vegetables of every kind all year round and the cheapest processed meals. It’s time to really take stock of how we go about fuelling our bodies. If you put the wrong petrol in a car, it stops running…that’s food for thought.