Letter: Food factory bosses must have known meat was not fresh beef

I would enjoy drinking Red Rum out of a glass, or eating him off a plate, as much as I would enjoy a Thumper good rabbit stew. I think I would draw the line at a Tom and Jerry mixed grill though.

Rudolf's red nose could really be the cherry on the Christmas cake. Joking aside though, I really think the powers that be are either plain stupid, or they think we, the public, are.

The scandal is not that the foods tested contained horsemeat. The scandal is, in my opinion, that the horse meat must have been unfit for human consumption.

Horsemeat is eaten widely on the continental mainland. I used to eat it regularly when I lived over there. Horsemeat costs a premium though, like fillet steak, it is expensive. No one in their right mind would sell horse meat to a food processor if they could sell it at a premium price to a butcher.

The only reason expensive horsemeat would end up in processed ready meals would be to disguise the fact that it was no longer suitable for human consumption. Probably too long in freezer storage, or just inedible old nags meant for dog food. Then for the factory bosses where the food was processed, to say they were conned by criminals is also untrue.

They have been processing hundreds of tonnes of beef a day for years. Are they really expecting us to believe that with all their years of experience they can't differentiate between fresh beef and rancid Black Beauty?

Joe Public cannot tell the difference after processing, and flavouring and preservative have been added by the ton, but the food processors surely knew all along.

Don't forget, buy fresh.

Alwyn Cox

Oswestry