Say Whoa to the meatballs?

Years ago, way back when we lived in Panorama City, right in the heart of the San Fernando valley, a scandal broke concerning a fast food chain that forever after we've referred to as "Jack in the Pouch." It turned out the hamburgers Jack was peddling were made from kangaroo meat. Not surprisingly, most Americans were thoroughly freaked out by the idea of eating Kanga and 'Roo; as a rule, we don't consider Disney* characters to be edible. The biggest scandal, of course, was that they'd snuck the kangaroo meat in for economic reasons. Ground kangaroo cost less pound per pound than ground beef.

Apparently the same thing is true of horse meat in Europe. Ground horse is cheaper than ground cow, so some meat processors have been stretching the bovine with equine. In a weird twist, it turns out horse meat is healthier for human consumption because it's leaner and less loaded with cholesterol and other bad stuff than beef. Nonetheless, when horse meat was found in ground meat sold by Tesco (a major supermarket chain in Great Britain), consumers were outraged. I can understand the dismay. People like to know just what it is they're grilling; adulteration is a bad thing, regardless of whether the product is being stretched with sea weed, textured soy protein, sawdust, or dead race horses.

Since the original scandal broke, I personally was rather taken aback to learn that one of my favorite food products, the Swedish meatballs served at IKEA (and sold frozen in the Swedish Food Market section of the stores), had been found to contain horse meat. Can I ever look at the 15-meatball plate again and not wonder just what the gravy is hiding? Is it possible to see whip marks from the jockey on a meatball? Can the lingonberry sauce compensate for a nagging sense that I'm chowing down on My Little Pony? How long will it take before someone discovers horse DNA in ground meat being sold as beef in this country?

From a purely pragmatic viewpoint, I don't see why some people are upset by the idea of eating horse meat. Dead animal flesh is dead animal flesh; livestock is livestock. It shouldn't make a difference that horses are more aesthetically pleasing to look at than cattle or that books like Black Beauty and My Friend Flicka were written about horses instead of cows. If it's okay to barbecue beef, than it should be okay to barbecue horses. I personally don't know if I'd ever eat horse meat**, but as long as it was clearly labeled as such, I'd have no problem seeing it sitting in the meat case at the local IGA. Who knows? Maybe if the price of beef and the price of hay both keep climbing, we will be seeing USDA-inspected Dobbin in butchers' cases in the not too distant future.

[*or A. E. Milne icons, if you're a purist.]

[**I didn't think I would be able to eat reindeer meat either but once it was on the plate in front of me Rudolph tasted just fine.]  

Livestock

After reading the killer cattle post and seeing that I still dream of cows, the Younger Daughter called to ask if I was serious about getting cattle after I retire.

Well, to be honest, no. I love Ayrshires -- they're a very elegant cow, as dairy cattle go, and they are on the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy watch list, but when I'm being realistic I know there's no way I want to be interacting with them on a daily basis. We hobby farmed in the '70s. I've known the joys of being cow-kicked while sitting on a milking stool, getting slapped in the face with a urine soaked tail, and having a case of contact dermatitis that had my hands itching for months on end. One of life's little ironies is that much as I love cows, I'm allergic to them. Besides, as the MMWR article made clear, a full-grown cow can kill a person without even meaning to. A mature Ayrshire can weigh 1100 pounds. All she has to do is sidestep unexpectedly, shove you up against a barn wall, and you've got cracked ribs or worse.

I would, however, like to treat the farm, the retirement bunker in Michigan's upper peninsula, as an actual farm. I like the idea of having some chickens wandering around, maybe some geese, and perhaps a few goats. And whatever we get, I'll try to pick it from the endangered livestock breeds lists, which is what a person who hobby farms should be doing anyway. The heritage breeds can tolerate the unpredictable conditions of a hobby farm where the breeds used for modern industrialized agriculture cannot.

When most people think of endangered species, they don't think of Pineywood cattle or Gloucestershire Old Spots pigs, but, thanks to industrialized agriculture, quite a few livestock breeds have either gone extinct or are close to it. Most dairy operations are 100% Holstein (the classic black-and-white cows in the Chik-Fil-A ads; which is another irony, using dairy cattle instead of beef to encourage people to eat chicken). Many of the other dairy breeds -- Ayrshires, Guernseys, brown Swiss, milking shorthorns, even Jerseys (Elsie the Borden cow is a Jersey) -- are harder and harder to find.

Same thing is happening with poultry -- Tyson and the other industrialized operations have bred varieties of chickens and turkeys that could not possibly survive on a traditional "family" farm. The emphasis on breast development in turkeys has meant that for many years the birds sold by Jenny O and the other big companies have had to be artificially inseminated -- the birds lost the ability to reproduce without help several decades ago. Ditto chickens -- breeding for lots of breast meat results in birds that can't mate naturally.

So I'll get a few chickens, some white Chinese geese (tempting though it is to get the gray Africans instead -- the Africans we had back in the '70s were the only "watchdogs" we've ever had that prevented Jehovah's Witnesses from getting out of their cars), and some goats to serve as brush cutters. Life will be good, albeit regretfully cow-free.