A good animal is, in fact, a good carcass for market

It’s been damage limitation all round with other leading brands clearing their shelves of ‘tainted ‘products. Of course, there has to be genuine concern about honest labelling of foodstuffs, and it would certainly be less than charitable to suggest that the retailers were knowingly complicit in the practice.

Indeed, the hysterical reaction to finding horse DNA in a tiny portion of processed meat, which led to tonnes of perfectly edible food being dumped, rather suggests they were taken in too. Nevertheless it’s hard to fathom.

I suppose it’s because for most of us, meat is merely a synthetic red lump of protein purchased in a shrink-wrapped container on a chilled supermarket shelf. We’re less familiar now with the sight of joints hanging in a family butcher – even less, the experience of a small holding with animals dispatched to the abattoir when they’ve reached their eat-by date.

Of course newspaper cartoonists have had a heyday and the graveyard humour moll has spun like a carousel. My favourite was the suggestion that a famous purveyor of frozen seafood had faced demands to withdraw its fish fingers in case they contained elements of seahorse. But, let’s face it, we must have been eating horsemeat without knowing it for ages with remarkably little adverse effects, and many along the butchery supply chain have not only been aware of the fact but have also profited from it.

There is undoubtedly a lot of horsemeat available. Animals are going to meet their maker on a daily basis. Ever wondered what happens to the carcases of the animals who’ve outlived their use to the racing industry, retired from farms, even the Thelwell castoffs? For many, it’s an inglorious end after a lifetime’s indignity of balancing whipping-boys on their backs or harnessed to cart-loads of exertion. Certainly, few are given a ceremonial burial.

Abroad, there’s a ‘chevaline’ in every French market. Horsemeat is widely available in European supermarkets. Donkey meat is used in saucisson, along with pork. It’s perfectly legal, and above board – probably more so than our age-old subterfuge of dressing mutton as lamb.

The Food Safety Authority took a beating, but who actually died directly from eating horse meat? In fact, it’s even recommended for those suffering from anaemia. I’ve certainly no time for religious zealots who refuse to eat one form of meat while perfectly happy to indulge in the brutal, ritualistic slaughter of another.

But we run into problems, don’t we, when we start to sentimentalise the livestock industry; describing sheep with ‘smiley’ faces, for example. To a farmer, they’re meat on legs, and though they’re treated humanely, they’re his ‘beasts’ which are not bred for the cat-walk. A good animal is, in fact a good carcass for market. Romantics drool over lambs in the field with a convenient disconnect about what they’re there for. Never let your children christen livestock Bluebell, or Clover or Buttercup, I say, in case it’s due a date with their knife and fork!

Frankly, I lay the blame at the door of Hollywood and Jemima Puddleduck. Meanwhile, others have a different attitude altogether, and swans, peacocks, trout and stags routinely disappear from their sylvan idyll into imported cooking pots.

Indeed, there is a great gulf set between farming and the wild. The voracious appetite of consumers in far-flung places with no scruples and bizarre medical practices is wreaking havoc with the planet’s eco balance, with the fate of tigers, rhino and sharks hanging in the balance. Culturally, we wouldn’t dream of eating anything we kept as a pet – in fact any creature that can cross the line to being subjugated and domesticated. So we don’t eat dog or horse – I guess we can be somewhat ambivalent over rabbit – but others certainly do.

Dolphins and kangaroo inhabit a perilous no-man’s land. We invoke a convenient mechanism to distance the squeamish from the very notion of devouring animals in our daily diet: we change the name of the grazing living to disguise the consumable dead. So, pigs become pork; cows, beef; deer, venison; calves, veal product, and so on. Curiously, lamb remains stranded in ambivalence.

There’s no question the nation has curious relationship with food production. We’re not known as ‘roast beefs’ for nothing, so while the notion of a succulent side of beef is a traditional emblem, the grisly process of how it gets there and what processes are involved are conveniently ignored.

While we might be addicted to Countryfile, The Archers and Clare Balding’s ramblings, the picture we have of the economic pressures faced by those who husband livestock industry is pretty remote from what ends up on our table. Consumers demand ever cheaper prices, and hey presto, to use a vineyard analogy – grand cru becomes supermarket blended.

Corners have obviously been cut, and if the suppliers are to be believed, measures have now been put in place to rectify flaws in what has become an over-extended and complicated chain – particularly when it comes to the processed meat industry. It has led to faddy boycotting of meat products, while it has given a deserved fillip to local butchers and producers.

I can’t help feeling that if the boots were on the other feet – 4 instead of 2 – the beasts would rule the natural kingdom with a far greater instinct for natural sustainability. Hands up who’s read ‘Animal Farm’.

Alan Le Breton