The Great British Bacon Scare of 2013
By Leah McLaren - Wednesday, March 13, 2013 - 0 Comments
Please don’t bring home the bacon: Leah McLaren explains
D. Philips/Redux
As one of the most rational, secular nations on Earth, Britain still has a few things it approaches with a collective passion verging on religiosity. These include football fanship (the European kind), alcohol (any old kind), dry wit as a proxy for emotion and cured, fried pig fat squished between white bread.
While the first three have a host of well-documented attendant dangers, it appears the bacon sandwich, that class-vaulting culinary staple for the ages, may prove the most dangerous by far. A new study released in the U.K. this month has found that British consumption of processed meat (meaning bacon, sausage, ham, mince or any meat that’s been salted, cured or chemically treated) can be blamed for an increased risk of early death, heart disease and cancer.
The findings were published in the journal BMC Medicine and are based on a study tracking the diet and lifestyle of almost 450,000 people in 10 European countries for an average of nearly 13 years. Admittedly, people who ate large quantities of processed meat were also more likely to smoke, drink heavily and have an unhealthy lifestyle. But even controlling for these factors, scientists still found that regular consumption of processed meat raised a person’s risk of heart disease by 72 per cent and cancer by 11 per cent, as well as accounting for a whopping 3,000 early deaths per year in the U.K. That’s one in 30 untimely bucket-kicks per annum down to regular servings of the hard-working bacon butty.
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South African tests show mislabeled jerky contains horse, pork, beef and kangaroo
By macleans.ca - Wednesday, March 6, 2013 at 8:04 AM - 0 Comments
Europe’s horse meat scandal seems tame compared to the exotic meats South Africans have…
Europe’s horse meat scandal seems tame compared to the exotic meats South Africans have been ingesting. Maria Eugenia D’Amato of the University of the Western Cape’s DNA forensics lab says researchers were curious to know which animals laid down their lives for biltong, the famous dried meat jerky snack. “One piece of dried meat,” D’Amato told Reuters, “looks like another.” Curiosity, as they say, killed the cat. Fortunately not this time. But they found 90 per cent of “wild” biltong—usually labelled as being made from kudu, a large antelope—was actually made from horse, pork, beef, giraffe—even kangaroo.
Meanwhile tests at Stellenbosch University found that beef burgers and sausages were not quite as advertised. In addition to surreptitious pork and chicken they found goat, donkey and water buffalo. The mislabelling violates regulations, co-author Louwrens C. Hoffman told the AP, and “poses economic, religious, ethical and health impacts.”
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Horse meat found in Ikea meatballs manufactured in Sweden
By Emily Senger - Monday, February 25, 2013 at 8:26 AM - 0 Comments
The British horse meat scandal is widening again, as a food inspectors announced Monday…
The British horse meat scandal is widening again, as a food inspectors announced Monday that they had found traces of horse meat in Ikea meatballs, which were manufactured in Sweden.
The meatballs were tested by Czech inspectors and were said to be made of beef and pork on the package, reports BBC News.
Some meatballs from that same batch had already gone out to stores in Slovakia, Hungary, France, Britain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Italy, Greece, Cyprus and Ireland, an Ikea spokesperson told The Associated Press.
The finding prompted the Ikeas in Sweden to stop serving meatballs in their stores, reports AP. The company also said it would remove the meatballs from its store shelves in Europe.
This horse meat finding comes after horse meat was found in some burger patties sold in England and the U.K. and then in pre-packaged frozen lasagnas sold in U.K. grocery stores. Those lasagnas were labeled as containing “100 per cent beef.”
The findings also prompted Sodexo, one of the largest food providers in Britain, to withdraw ground beef from schools, hospitals and the Armed Forces, reports The Telegraph.
EU officials were scheduled to meet Monday to discuss labeling rules.
