Risks are low from medicated horsemeat

[FarCenter]

The most recent development involves phenylbutazone, a type of pain medication that can have serious side effects. Food controllers from the British Food Standards Agency (FSA) have found traces of bute, as it's also known, in eight horse carcasses intended for human consumption. Between three and six of them were exported to France before researchers found they contained the painkiller, and may have entered the food chain.

...

There was still enough left in the British carcasses to test positive, however, and now horsemeat laced with phenylbutazone is on its way to French dinner tables. How harmful could the medicated meat be for those who eat it?

The highest concentration the FSA found in its test was 1.9 milligrams per one kilogram of meat. One dose prescribed to an adult patient is 200 milligrams, according to Hein. To reach that therapeutic dose would require eating 100 kilograms of meat with a bute concentration like that found by the FSA.

That's a lot of frozen lasagna, especially considering that not all mislabeled packages contain 100 percent pure horsemeat, but likely more of a mix of beef and horse, said Hein.

"One kilo of horsemeat is not going to give you an improvement of your arthritis symptoms," the pharmacologist joked. "But we don't know much about long-term consequences, so of course you can't say 'It doesn't matter if there's bute in all our food!'"

http://www.dw.de/risks-are-low-from-medicated-horsemeat/a-16608545

[Warpy]

1. I don't think it was ever a problem over health concerns

about horsemeat getting into the cow meat supply. It was more a concern about mislabeling. A lot of people out there won't eat horses for the same reason they won't eat cats and dogs, and for them, the mislabeling is a huge deal.

Imagine finding out your last hamburger might have had shelter pets ground up in it.

No, it's not going to kill you. It is going to put you off your feed for a very long time.

[KoKo]

2. If you know about the News about this...there was Corporate Corruption

at the heart of it.

You make it sound so good that we should eat Horse Meat from sources from shady corporate underhanded places...and then you down play that folks who don't want to eat "cats and dogs" are just a question over MISLABELING?

And that you are so cautious that you say: "No, it's not going to kill you. It is going to put you off your feed for a very long time."

Are you a VEGAN and so you put this out there..???

I'm trying to find a reason you would post what you did. I hope you have a reasoning for this. And WHY you don't know what BBC is investigating that the "Horse Meat" may well have been illegal....

[Warpy]

4. Damn, talk about a bunch of scattershot attempts at insult!

Sorry, dear, but you need to polish your aim a bit.

I'm saying the health concerns were extremely limited. It was a mislabeling problem by a bunch of companies who found it expedient to adulterate their beef supply with horsemeat. Better?

Horse in this case was likely the cheaper meat, thus providing the incentive to mix the two and mislabel everything as pure beef.

Horse has been eaten labeled as such in France and other places. Puppy dog is eaten on local reservations and across southeast Asia. Guinea pig is eaten in South America. Finding a foodstuff disgusting is culturally bound.

And that, along with the obvious cheapening of a product by adulteration, is the crux of the problem, not any real health issues.

[KoKo]

7. I don't expect to eat BEEF labelled as HORSE MEAT...isn't that

something that most of us expect?

[KoKo]

10. BBC ALL OVER the "Horsemeat Scandal".......Here:

"Horsemeat scandal keeps running, as Tesco sells withdrawn burgers"

View profile
I was watching BBC this weekend and didn't know who Tesco was but they were reporting on their selling of the Horsemeat Burgers and prepared foods.... So, this might be of interest to go along with your post

---------------

Horsemeat scandal keeps running, as Tesco sells withdrawn burgers

By Michael Northcott Friday, 25 January 2013
Most media outlets must be getting a little hoarse from shouting about contaminated burgers, but a Tesco store in Oxford is in the muck after a cashier sold some of the withdrawn patties a week after the scandal broke.

The UK’s largest supermarket chain has had to apologise and launch an investigation after its store in Cowley, Oxford, managed to sell a contaminated horsemeat burger days after they had been withdrawn from shelves.

Scandal erupted after a BBC reporter succeeded in buying a pack of Tesco own-brand frozen quarter pounders, thanks to a cashier who overrode an alert message on the till.

Tesco trotted out a statement quick sharp: ‘While this product was not implicated in the FSAI investigation, and was withdrawn as a precaution, we are urgently investigating how this product came to be on a shelf in store.

‘The block on purchase at the checkout should not have been overridden. We sincerely apologise for this, and we have spoken to the store to ensure this does not happen again.’

If you haven’t heard a bit about the horsemeat story then you must have been on another planet. But just in case, last week Tesco came under fire after a food safety test found traces of horse DNA in some of its beef burgers. A couple of other supermarkets got dragged down in the scandal too because of shared suppliers, and a torrent of horse-related puns swamped Twitter for a few days.

http://www.managementtoday.co.uk/news/1168399/horsemeat-scandal-keeps-running-tesco-sells-withdrawn-burgers/

[KoKo]

9. BBC all over the HORSE MEAT SCANDAL:

"Horsemeat scandal keeps running, as Tesco sells withdrawn burgers"

View profile
I was watching BBC this weekend and didn't know who Tesco was but they were reporting on their selling of the Horsemeat Burgers and prepared foods.... So, this might be of interest to go along with your post

---------------

Horsemeat scandal keeps running, as Tesco sells withdrawn burgers

By Michael Northcott Friday, 25 January 2013
Most media outlets must be getting a little hoarse from shouting about contaminated burgers, but a Tesco store in Oxford is in the muck after a cashier sold some of the withdrawn patties a week after the scandal broke.

The UK’s largest supermarket chain has had to apologise and launch an investigation after its store in Cowley, Oxford, managed to sell a contaminated horsemeat burger days after they had been withdrawn from shelves.

Scandal erupted after a BBC reporter succeeded in buying a pack of Tesco own-brand frozen quarter pounders, thanks to a cashier who overrode an alert message on the till.

Tesco trotted out a statement quick sharp: ‘While this product was not implicated in the FSAI investigation, and was withdrawn as a precaution, we are urgently investigating how this product came to be on a shelf in store.

‘The block on purchase at the checkout should not have been overridden. We sincerely apologise for this, and we have spoken to the store to ensure this does not happen again.’

If you haven’t heard a bit about the horsemeat story then you must have been on another planet. But just in case, last week Tesco came under fire after a food safety test found traces of horse DNA in some of its beef burgers. A couple of other supermarkets got dragged down in the scandal too because of shared suppliers, and a torrent of horse-related puns swamped Twitter for a few days.

http://www.managementtoday.co.uk/news/1168399/horsemeat-scandal-keeps-running-tesco-sells-withdrawn-burgers/

[muriel_volestrangler]

11. No, the concerns about 'bute' did get mentioned when they said untraceable horses could be involved

It was only when the test for it was positive that they then said "but you'd need to eat more than is humanly possible to get the dangerous dose". See, for instance: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21383362 . That just said it was a danger.

[Warpy]

13. so far, it's been a fairly small amount.

Nestle just pulled products, citing detectable levels of horse DNA in the meat, barely over 1%.

This is just pure greed, substituting a cheaper meat to cut costs. There is just nothing intrinsically wrong with eating horse meat. People just want to know what they're eating and they don't want to pay a premium price for foods that have been adulterated with cheaper items.

It's more on the line of Taco Hell getting caught putting "non meat fillers" into their taco mystery meat. People were just not getting what they paid for more than a health risk.

[muriel_volestrangler]

14. Yeah, it was just that, in the several stories that mentioned 'bute' might be a problem

before it was detected, every one I heard or read implied it could be a real health risk to humans. They never tried to say how much meat you'd need to eat; they just said "banned for humans". So a story like the OP is worth running.

[KoKo]

3. Fine...you eat it at Burger King, USA and thrill at your experience..

I do believe the rest of us who are still meat eaters expect better labeling and not some scam to put this stuff in our food.

It's fine if you are a Vegan...but many of us eat more Veggies than Meat and we expect and demand the "meat we eat" have some regulation.

I would hope you feel the same and were just being snarky or something with this post.

[pinboy3niner]

5. Fine. If USDA aproves, label it and see...

...who wants to eat the filly that was lamed in the 1st at Santa Anita.

[Deep13]

6. Hold your horses....

So now we are in a position where the discussion of the safety of horse medications for human consumption is a real thing. Bravo, industrialized world!

[Ian David]

8. Now, they're saying it might be donkey meat. n/t

[KoKo]

15. Donkey...Horses Ass...Cats...Dogs..I don't pay for BEEF to get this

stuff in my Food!

[longship]

12. Don't they mean, "except for the horses"? nt