THE HORSEMEAT CHRONICLES

PART THREE:   GANGSTERS AND MURDERERS

 

I’m beginning this post with a message straight from the heart. After what so many of us have seen on television recently what I’m writing here doesn’t come easy. It comes with a moral indignation, outrage and disgust over the brutal murder of innocent dumb creatures by methods so vile that it makes me want to spit at its perpetrators.

Yeah, yeah, all you ere we go footballers who rushed off the field to the burger van. All hot and grinning to guzzle down the plate of horse in a bap on offer rather than beef. Someone ought to whip and beat you so it’s the last thing you’ll ever know before a trap door opens underneath three or four of you and you fall thirty feet, break your legs and your neck and while still semi-conscious have men get to work on you with cleavers and knives.

Horses coming out of green fields and sunlight all innocent, good natured and trusting. Then you get herded into dark sheds and pens, beaten and prodded and whipped till you were trembling with fear. Terrified over the chute before you fell into nowhere, till you were hacked and stabbed to the heart.

Somewhere in Ireland, somewhere in Romania. Innocent good natured friends of all children. Stabbed and hacked to the heart for your god-damned fucking ere we go burger meat and the guts you get in your supermarket foods. Horses beaten and whipped for your ready-meals. Lovingly processed and prepared by amoral gangsters. And worse, even worse than our vile murder is the fact that recent surveys show you’re still buying pieces of us knowing we’re there. That you haven’t changed your eating habits at all.

So what is it with you people? Don’t you care how we horses die before we get onto your plate? Don’t you want to think about how we once were. Friendly and affable with you and your kids by the gates of some field in the sunlight. Don’t you want to think of the truth. How we ran around in some field all pleased and happy before we went down your gobs and came out your arses. Don’t you want to know about the meat industry gangsters, the criminals who bought us with crooked paperwork and passed us on to the slaughterers with the same lies… butchers who carved us up then passed us on to the processors with more god-damned lies who in turn lied us on to supermarkets who never bothered to check what we were before they sold bits of us on to you? Little bits of us you once saw whole in fields and were glad you’d been out in the country. Who came over to greet you all friendly and helped give you a good day. Tell the truth! Didn’t being close to us there in the country make the day out for you and the kids?

And with all of this said our Government tells us not to throw away the cheap frozen or fresh ready-meal packs we’ve bought, full of our meat. No, don’t chuck them away. They’re quite safe to eat! So what happened to that horse you were riding Mister Prime Minister or the nag your dear Rebekkah got from the police? Eating something that David Cameron’s arse used to be on! Now that’s a real tasty thought! No, don’t throw it away. Keep it in the freezer till we’ve done all the tests. And carry on buying cheap. We’ve got all the food testing boys in on the job!

Trouble is, there’s a multi-billion pound industry in question and knowing there are food-gangsters involved in the supply chain while the Food Standard Agency’s been sleeping, can you honestly say we can trust you? Especially when everyone in the food chain’s throwing up their hands pleading innocent!

It’s not me that done it all guv. I’m innocent I tell yer… Ee was the one what done it. The geezer next door.

Remember what I said in my last horsemeat post? About testing meat in tins, stock cubes and other food additives. Well at last! Six weeks after the scandal first broke the Food Standards Agency are doubling the number of tests carried out on these supposed beef products including those that incorporate gelatin. But then this scandal has been a well-kept secret for years in the food industry. It’s a bit too close to Jimmy Savile for comfort. A lucrative money making machine paying off people or something too plain big to expose. That’s alright. Now that it’s out in the open everyone’s honest all of a sudden, testing and checking over a corpse. Too scared to nail it while it was alive, everyone’s now running around looking for credit. Doing the job they were supposed to do in the first place. Such things come with a name. It’s called policing standards. Not turning a blind eye.

Just another blind eye that’s been turning for years! The real criminals are not just the gangsters busy with meat substitution or the killers with cleavers preparing the way. Equally criminal are the facilitators in Britain and Europe who let them all do the business. Cover their backs. Allow them to carry on substituting meat after they’ve already been caught with their dicks out. Sorry to disappoint all you simply astonished people but there’s nothing really complicated in it at all. Substituting meat mate, or mon ami? Well we just want ten percent of the profit and you keep the rest. Nothing complicated about that! Just another holiday home in the Bahamas! The supermarkets and food standards people don’t do the testing they should on a regular basis and the public don’t ask any questions. All they’re good for is paying a couple of quid, putting  it into a microwave then down their kids throats so no-one’s any the wiser. Got it, mon ami?

Pots of money and killers with knives. All part of the same story. Endless amounts of money to be made. Unscrupulous unethical rascals. Same as banking and finance. The public being cheated and mis-sold dodgy products and the same kind of people who pay in the end. A few hundred criminals and millions of victims. It’s all pretty straightforward. Criminals need a mass market, but then you can’t call people in the financial services industry criminals. It’s not like that at all! They’re nice people really who just make mistakes!

How much worse can it get? Nestle, a Swiss company and the world’s largest food manufacturer have just discovered naughtiness in some of their products sold in Italy and Spain with many more yet to be tested across Europe so if it’s Nestle, Findus and Birds Eye, what next? With hundreds of products now being tested and thousands more suspects, the full results of this across the board crisis won’t be known for months if not years and by then we’d have all had a taste. Only maybe that’s not the end at all. Now they’ve tried horses the food gangsters will be looking around and they won’t have to look far. There’s a surplus of stray dogs in the country and the Food Standards Agency doesn’t test canine. Unusual, untraceable meat products? If it’s the dogs bollocks you want it’s the dog’s bollocks you’ll get! Don’t worry, they’ll even give it a flavor. Don’t rule out Vindaloo, then there’s always a creamy poodle masala. And if you don’t fancy Indian you can always add Piccalilli.

It’s a situation that’s not hard to contemplate. In Britain these days people accept what they’re given. Accept just about anything really without making too much of a fuss. Go on eating dodgy food without question, knowing how horses are killed.

Oh don’t get me wrong. I’m no vegetarian. I eat meat big so why all the stuff about horses? Are they any the less personable than pigs? Your kids don’t save in a horsey box do they, and there’s always Miss Piggy! No, this isn’t a post about me. It’s about how horses are killed and how you are being cheated. We feel a fondness for horses so let’s remember how many die in terror to be on your plate. They can’t complain. You can. You used to stand up and in best British tradition say, hey, that’s not right but we don’t do too much of  that anymore. Don’t think too much about our health-care workers who earn so little. Instead we give large sums of money away to watch petulant grossly overpaid footballers on Saturdays instead of putting decent food on the table that wasn’t beaten or stabbed while it lived.

You’ve been allowing yourselves to do the same old thing too easily. Letting criminals and rascals plunder your salaries and cheat your kids of food. You let yourselves go as men and let your women and kids get fat on cheap rubbish foods. You’ve all but surrendered your right to take action thinking that a vote once every five years is enough! Well I’ll tell you. If you want there’s still time to take yourselves in hand and ask questions again. Be family minded. Care about what your wives and kids eat. You’ve become self-indulgent but you still know what’s right and feeding your kids murdered horses is somewhere you don’t need to go.

I’ll end here quoting the lines of a verse I recently read inscribed on a wall, written by someone unknown early 19^th century. It’s about a horse who was beaten to death because it couldn’t climb up a steep hill carrying a heavy load. Never mind the religion, it’s there for your conscience.

“A man of kindness to his beast is kind.

But brutal actions show a brutal mind.
Remember! He who made thee made the brute.
Who gave thee speech and reason, formed him mute.
He can’t complain, but God’s all seeing eye
Beholds thy cruelty and hears his cry
He was designed thy Servant, not thy Drudge
Remember! His Creator is thy Judge.”          

IF YOU’VE STILL GOT NOTHING TO SAY ABOUT THE PEOPLE WHO FEED YOUR KIDS HORSE INSTEAD OF THE BEEF THAT’S PROMISED THEN CARRY ON WALKING BY.