The picture below shows perfectly how little Greeks understand or care for the horsemeat scandal:
"Fresh BEEF MINCE imported breast meat" is on special at the super-duper price of €6.49, reduced from €7.98. As a standard of measure, Greek beef (which is invariably almost always born in France, and begins its Greek life, until the time of slaughter, at the age of 5 months) is sold at prices starting from €10+/kg.
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| "Fresh BEEF MINCE imported breast meat" |
While the rest of Europe is avoiding pre-minced meat products and the horsemeat scandal has become the main topic of discussion among the EU agriculture ministers, as well as the fact that horse-beef products have been confirmed to have been sold in Greece, top-end supermarkets like this one are selling it cheaply - and from what I saw this afternoon, people are buying it, as if the horsemeat scandal could never affect us, nor that we should be worrying about it. After all, it's a European problem, isn't it? And we are what we eat, which is... Greek.
More on Europe in a later post.
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Who says that french beef is born in France? As far as I know british people don't like veal. So young calves are transported alive to France. So french beef might not be so french in the end.
ReplyDeleteCalves are seen as a side product of milk production. So they are produced invariably of the demand for veal or beef. You get a lot more calves than you need to cover the beef consumption so a lot of them are exported.
I think the French do eat veal so the surplus calves in Europe must mainly come from the UK.
I lived through one of the mad cow scares. No one was buying beef in the UK for one week and then the S/M slashed their prices to half and they sold out. Talking about consumer awareness.
The AB supermarket is usually very good about labelling their meat - on all their products, you find out where the animal was born, and where it was raised - if it was raised in two different countries both will be mentioned; and finally where it was slaughtered. Inasmuch as I can place trust in any company that supplies me with food, I believe that when they say 'born in france', they mean just that - i'd be really surprised to hear that the UK can afford to raise beef on such a scale and sell it on (among its 63 million population, only 10% are involved in agriculture - they cant keep up with their own demand, surely?!)
DeleteYou are right if it says "born in France" but veal exports from the UK to other coutries is a reality http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4975994.stm It was banned after the BSE scandal and young bulls days old had to be killed but it has been resumed. I remember pictures of crates full of young bulls and protestors for the inhumane conditions of the transport were always on the news in the '90's. Those animals coming from milk producing cows are not considered good enough to be raised for beef. So overconsumption of dairy products has its cost on animals too. I wonder if we can buy beef in Greece. We always buy veal. I remember the greek-raised beef we used to eat in the '70's. Those steaks were tough. That meat was only edible as mince.
DeleteIs it because we all love horses or is it a matter of thinking the meat is inferior or contaminated somehow? I'm just asking because I have no "frame of reference" about it.
ReplyDeleteI do know that I won't ever eat veal, though. It seems that the food industry will stop at nothing to cut corners and make big profits. I am fortunate that we don't ever buy beef, we just eat elk hunted by my husband.