Shutting the stable door when the horse has bolted

But when the outcry subsides and the issue fades from the headlines a simple, undeniable fact will remain: tens of thousands of people across Britain unwittingly tucked into Dobbin with a dollop of ketchup on the side and they actually quite liked it.

It seems that many of us have been eating horse for quite some time, and no one – not one single person – actually noticed.

In fact, the alarm was raised not by a consumer suggesting that their burger or lasagne tasted a bit horsey, but during random testing in a laboratory in Ireland. So many of us ate horse, and what is so wrong with that?

For the consumer, the horse meat saga is a curious one. Whereas the BSE scare of the 1990s posed what at the time was thought to be a major threat to our health, the revelations that many of us have probably eaten the diced remains of an old nag have so far thrown up nothing more than a rather interesting moral dilemma.

The dilemma of course is whether we are comfortable with the idea of eating an animal revered by so many; an animal which is loved and admired by children and adults alike and which are regarded more as friends than pets by those lucky enough to own one.

But surely it would be hypocrisy in the extreme for any meat eater to feel revulsion at the thought that they have inadvertently tucked into horse. If we eat one animal, surely we should eat them all.

It is only the culture that we are born into which defines which animals make it on to our menu. And just because one animal is not on that list, it doesn’t mean it is wrong to eat it.

After all, although horse may not appear on our cultural register, the odds of finding it on a dinner plate 14 miles or so to our east are fairly high.

And so the real issue arising from this scandal is not the fact that we have eaten horse, it’s not about who our pets are and who our meals are or whether dining on Black Beauty is any worse than tucking into Babe.

It is of course all about the fact that we have been duped by an industry we all put so much trust in when all the signs are that we should be inherently suspicious of everything they do.

So few of us seem to care where our food comes from, or question how safe it is. Personally, I have never eaten a Findus product. But so many people put their faith in these budget brands even though they sell them their dinner for what is little more than small change.

The Findus ‘beef’ lasagne, for example, which actually contained up to 100 per cent horse, was being sold for about £1.40. That’s £1.40 for alleged beef, pasta, cheese and tomato sauce. And some packaging. Why did none of us ever consider that with prices like this, someone along the supply chain could be trying to cut corners?

Who is to blame, though, is not quite clear. Findus is threatening to sue its French suppliers Comigel, who are in turn claiming that they are the real victims and now intend to take their suppliers to court.

But a week on and we still don’t know where all these horses have come from, although if some reports are to be believed, the sudden addition of equine meat into our burgers and lasagnes has coincided with a rise in unwanted horses in Romania following new restrictions on horse-drawn carts on the roads there.

But the fact that someone somewhere slipped some horse into our food for the simple reason that it is cheaper than cow may soon turn out to be the least of our problems.

This saga seems to have woken the nation up to the simple fact that when food is processed, there are numerous ways in which it can be adulterated. And the adulteration does not stop at horse.

Although there are currently no health concerns and the scandal really stops at the simple fact that horse got into the food chain without anyone knowing about it, it may be that over the coming weeks we learn that the manufacturers have been lacing our burgers and lasagnes with something a lot more sinister than a bit of equine meat. After all, it is reasonable to assume that if someone can slip a bit of horse into our food, then there is nothing to stop them adding something which could potentially have an effect on our health.

The Food Standards Agency has already ordered tests for the presence of the veterinary drug phenylbutazone, which is banned from entering the food chain, but stressed that it has no evidence so far that the contaminated meals posed a danger to health.

As far as we know, all the affected products have now been taken off the shelves in an act which can very properly be described as closing the stable door after the horse has bolted.

And in a move that rekindles memories of former Tory Agriculture Minister John Gummer posing for pictures while tucking into a burger with his daughter Cordelia at the height of the BSE scare, Food Minister David Heath last week urged Britons to keep beef ready meals on the menu.

It is perhaps an understandable move given that no one is suggesting the meat poses a health risk, but could be a little hasty considering that tests on many of the affected products are still ongoing.

But perhaps some will have already made up their minds and turned their back on processed food, not because they feel some kind of shame about eating horse, but because they now think more about where the stuff they put in their mouth comes from.

And who knows, perhaps it will even inspire a few more people to leave processed food companies and their questionable suppliers behind and start buying their meat from a source that will always be reputable, the local butcher.